


Rasputin

by xenokattz



Series: D'Ancanto [2]
Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: 3 times your daily intake of violence/sexual situations/strong language, Child Abuse, GQBAMF in a line behind me bitches, Gen, Prostitution, one-sided Gambit/Rogue if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-07 05:28:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 61,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xenokattz/pseuds/xenokattz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mutilated corpses. Mutant prostitutes. A missing 10-year-old. Friends with secrets. Detective Marie D'Ancanto goes undercover to solve one of MacTac's bloodiest cases which may be tied to her oldest buddy, Pete Rasputin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  


Eyeless, noseless, fingerless and-- Marie crossed her legs in empathy-- dickless, bloated with water and God only knew what the Hudson had brewed in its two hundred plus years of industrial disregard for life, the body was barely recognizable as human. A dozen yards away, someone was vomiting. Probably several someones. The sour smell added to the maleficence of the scene.  
  
This winter, sleet and mud flavoured New York City. Nothing so picturesque as Rockefeller Centre or the Chrysler Building iced with snow this year. No, the city was just wet and cold. Marie pulled her wool coat tighter around her neck to prevent more ninja ice particles from sneaking down her back. She breathed on her double-gloved hands for some momentary warmth. They'd hauled in a lot of frozen homeless bodies the past few months. No doubt they'd haul in a few more. At least they'd be in one piece. 

A cop in blues jogged to her side, probably more to generate heat than out of any sense of urgency. Marie had flashed her creds at the police line, but she took her badge out again just in case. There were a lot of sickos out there who _would_ want to poke around a mutilated body for fifteen minutes of fame and a hundred bucks on the latest social media sites. 

"I wish I could say your iron stomach is a relief, detective," said the cop, Lieutenant Mudaffer according to his badge. "But something tells me this isn't the first time you've seen a body look like this."

"The penis is new," said Marie. "The vic having a penis, I mean. And cutting it off. The mutilation's deliberate; fish and crabs wouldn't leave a clean slice like this unless they've learned to use knives and forks down there."

"The things I've seen in the past twenty years, detective, I wouldn't be surprised if they did," said Mudaffer. "Someone dragged the duffel out of the water in the middle of the night-- probably a hobo looking to score a few useful things. We figured he opened it up, saw the body, and left. As soon as it was light enough out, a group of joggers tripped into it. Literally."

"Wouldn't want to see their therapy bills."

"No, ma'am."

"DNA checks out as mutant?"

Lieutenant Mudaffer blinked. "Erm. He's got striped fur."

"Freak is the new cool. Ziff gives users temporary powers. The latest bodmods can give you ears, tails, and scales. When I was a kid, I knew someone who'd pay two hundred bucks a month to wax all her body hair off. Now you can get fur extensions. Run DNA."

"Yes, ma'am." He signalled for a crime scene tech.

Marie crouched closer to the body. She pulled her every-day gloves off in favour of a pair of nitrile ones from the techs. Her usual gloves had to be waterproof but breathable and thin enough to be useful. Expensive as hell, of course. Good thing she had acquaintances in high places like the Xavier's Institute. To be honest, she thought Hank McCoy appreciated the occasional biochemistry puzzle to break up the monotony of saving the world with his giant brain.

Using long-nosed pliers, Marie lifted the neckline of the vic's shirt then the hem to assess for signs of assault. No visible bruising but there were a few lighter coloured lines along his stomach that might have been old scars. Marie made a mental note to ask about that in the autopsy. He didn't have pants or underwear on.

"Any clue if he'd been raped?" asked Marie. "Hard to tell from the way the body's lying."

"We haven't checked that yet," said Lieutenant Mudaffer.

"Don't mind if I do the honours." She waved to the nearest tech. "Push one of his knees up."

The tech obeyed, though with some difficulty.

"Rigor?" Marie asked.

"Or bloat," said the tech. "Flesh is real boggy. Makes joint manipulation as much of a bitch as rigor. I hate drownings."

"Yeah, give me a nice, straight-forward burial any day. Water messes everything up." Marie spread the victim's buttocks apart. "No visible external trauma which could mean there was no rape or the water washed away any recent evidence."

"He could be a hooker. Regular, long-term anal intercourse means his body would have adjusted," said Lieutenant Mudaffer.

"We'll just have to chalk this up as one more thing for the coroner to enlighten us with. We can't afford to be sloppy with this case. Let's not assume this is the same asshole as the one I'm tracking down."

"They're all assholes."

Marie managed a grin. "I like to think of assholes as a small, vocal minority. Helps me stick to one drink a night."

"MacTac's holding this one pretty close to its chest," said Mudaffer.

"Not on purpose." She looked around for eavesdroppers before continuing. "You gonna pick up this case for your house?"

"Depends. Is it gonna go through our house?"

"I heard great things about your coroner. We'd like to work with her. If you can clear that, we can see about processing the MacTac cases through the 32nd."

Mudaffer raised his eyebrows. "I'll see what I can do. What can you tell me about this case?"

"In the past three months, MacTac brought four bodies into our caseload," said Marie. "We fished two of them on our side of the Hudson, one on the Bronx side of the Harlem River, and one just under the Roosevelt Bridge. All between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, all Level 2 or 3 physical mutations, and a high probability that all worked as prostitutes. Same kind of mutilation: noses, ears, fingers, and toes cut off and eyeballs pierced through like grapes. Until this vic, all women."

"Sounds organized to me."

Marie opted to change the subject slightly. "Was this still in the duffel when the joggers found him?"

"Half out. The hobo or whoever seemed desperate enough to go through a dead man's--"

"Boy."

Lieutenant Mudaffer raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"This is a boy," Marie explained. "Maybe late teens or early twenties. He doesn't have the mass of a grown man."

"Could be malnutrition if he grew up a runaway."

"Features are too soft for a runaway. Unmarked. You live on the street that long, you look fifty by the time you're twenty-five. This one, despite his disfigurement, still scans pretty easily as a young adult." She turned the victim's left arm over. Blue-violet scabs decorated the inside of his elbows and forearms where his fur grew thinner. Larger, ragged scars marred the backs on his hands. "Trackmarks."

"Good old fashioned heroin," Lieutenant Mudaffer remarked.

"Still fucking people up after three hundred years. They should make it a tagline. The heroin's consistent with my previous vics anyway. But then so are half the bodies that end up in the fridge. What else have you got for me?"

"We're dredging the river downstream for about a mile to account for the currents. So far nothing suspicious."

"Thanks for trying anyway. You know my number and email. Let me know if you do find anything; I'll be dropping by your precinct--"

"Who the _hell_ are you?"

Marie couldn't see the bellower but if Lieutenant Mudaffer's eye roll was anything to go by, the new guy's pomposity was par for the course. She really didn't have time for turf war bullshit. Not with a case to solve. Turning sharply on her heel, she zeroed on the source of the shouting. Navy suit, artfully bland haircut, shiny leather shoes. Never trust a cop with shiny-as-new shoes. Even IA mucked up their knees for work; only the middle-management douchenozzles dodged street grime.

She flashed her creds. "Detective Marie D'Ancanto, MacTac. I have reason to believe this--"

"And who gave you jurisdiction over this crime scene?"

"Well, first of all, as a detective second-class in the great city of New York, any major crime _is_ part of my jurisdiction should the nearest detectives be unavailable. Secondly--"

"How do you know they're unavailable if you come charging in here without going up the appropriate chain-of-command?"

Marie unclenched her jaw. "Secondly, before I was so rudely interrupted, the Mutant Crimes Task Force have primary jurisdiction over any crimes committed against or by mutants in all the boroughs of New York City. So, in fact, I _am_ the appropriate chain-of-command. You're welcome."

Shiny Shoes McDouchnozzle fumbled with his goatee. "Mutant crimes, huh? You're sure about that?"

"Vic's got fur," Lieutenant Mudaffer offered with facetious politesse.

"I have everything I need so far from this excellent crew who've been here for at least two hours," said Marie. "I just told Lieutenant Mudaffer over here that I'll be in contact in the near future since this case might be related to something on my desk."

"You can contact me." Shiny Shoes handed over a business card. "Sergeant Cartwright, 32nd Precinct. Is it a big case?"

Marie tucked the card into a pocket. She needed a new bookmark. Those contacts she actually used, she kept in her brain, backed up by her phone. One more prize from Xavier's, the phone had unparalleled security. Kitty Pride upgraded it yearly for fun. The phone itself had been her final project for her Master's degree.

"I'll call tomorrow morning to see if the coroner's gotten around to this one before I drop by," she said.

"What, you aren't coming around right now?" Sergeant Cartwright asked.

"Gotta get back to work. I just came over because I was in the area."

"Isn't this work?"

Marie grinned, showing off all her teeth.

* * *

With the except of Mutant Town-- also known as District X, formerly known as Alphabet City-- the outer boroughs were the "rough" parts of New York City. Manhattan itself had to stay sparkly for the camera-wielding tourists and the deep-pocketed suits. Harlem and SoHo were picturesquely destitute, the exposed brick fronts hiding modern condos. The oldest Chinatown in the continent was only for show; the real East-Asian hub now lay in Queens.

Despite the "clean-up" in 1990s and the post-9/11 rebuilding, Manhattan could never really let go of its seedy corners. Pharmaceutical experts sold drug cocktails traded in Harlem, prostitutes met with web-sourced clients in Murray Hill, crackers hacked accounts with portable card readers in the Financial District. These were Marie's cases, the hands-on, paperwork-slogging cases. The ones that barely registered a blip online any more with the exception of her latest.

She had wanted this mutilation case as soon as it came down the pipe. Not because she needed to prove herself, not because the police commissioner hinted at a commendation if MacTac closed the case quickly and quietly, and not because too many mutants in her old beat had to turn to prostitution to survive. 

Well, not _just_ because of those reasons.

After four months of dead ends, she started this undercover op. Of the half-dozen women at MacTac, only she and Charlotte Jones had the training for the job. Charlotte was playing captain though which was how Marie found herself walking the streets of the Bronx tonight, for the sixteenth night in a row, wearing poorly-made fetish gear that did nothing to protect her from the weather. 

The real working girls were out here, a far cry from the pampered escorts just across the water. Those women were practically unionized. The contacts Marie had were haggard, usually brain-fried to forget about work, with smiles as dead as the bodies in the morgue. She touched a couple of them by accident when her reflexes failed her. It was no hardship to play the deadness inside after that.

Her powers worked pretty funny after the Senator Trask-Ziff case over a year (nineteen months and twelve days) ago. Thanks to one Karl Lycos, AKA Sauron, jacking her powers back on as well as her complete abstinence from the mutation-negating drug, Novomane, her powers were back and then some. No more skin-to-skin contact unless she wanted to absorb someone; she had to stay covered up all the time. Not an easy task when as posing as a hooker but something about absorbing Sauron allowed her to tap into the powers. Never to the fullest extent of the original mutant but enough to be useful which was why she could go around as a reptilian mutant hooker called Liz without being recognized as Detective D'Ancanto who walked along the same streets as a beat cop five years ago. 

"Hey, hey, hey, girl."

Marie looked up. The woman approaching had lanky blonde hair and caverns dug out under her cheekbones. "Hey, Skids. Got a smoke?"

"Sure, yeah, sure, sure, here, sure." Skids held out a pack of mostly new cigarettes, her hands trembling with cold or a high. Marie chose the cleanest looking one. "I'd've thought you'd have some. You usually do. You do. That whipping thing, that really work, huh? I'd do that if it works."

Marie lifted her riding crop. "This thing? You get the right john, it's not bad. Sometimes you don't even gotta fuck; they just jizz all over themselves. Takes fucking forever. Gimme a ten-second hand-job any day."

"Why'd you do it then?"

"Gets 'em all randy."

Skids giggled. "So, hey, I heard there was this party over in Brighton Beach. Lots of candy. Lots of johns wanting mutie pootie. Told 'em I knew a couple girls perfect for the job."

"You fucking bitch, you going into pimping now? You gonna want a cut of this?" Marie teased, giving her own breasts a squeeze.

"Aw, put that away, bitch, I ain't touching that for less than a Benjamin. I'm doing you a favour. It's a favour. I'm doing you a favour here and, y'know, you do the same for me, right?"

"Sure I will, sugar. Party's on now?"

"Yeah! Pinhead's gonna give us a ride. You know Pinhead? He's a good one. Shit with his pecker, great with weed. But ain't that always the case, huh? Your man better be good in the sack, good in the wallet, or good with the vitamins. He gotta be good, huh, Liz?" Skids eyed Marie with a suddenly clear, critical eye. "Don't know if you can go in there like that. Not enough skin. How'd they know you're a mutant without skin?"

"I look like a fucking snake, Skids," said Marie. "Where's Pinhead now?"

Skids held up a phone. "I'll give him a call. He probably has Blitzen right now. You know Blitzen?"

"The one with the hooves and the big red eyes?"

"That's her. John's'll probably want to fucking, I dunno, lick her feet or some shit. Fucking johns."

"No thanks."

Skids cracked out another laugh. "You're funny, Liz. It's why I like you. It's why I share my smokes with you. You're funny."

Pinhead's car eased around the corner, its bass stereo thumping. Pinhead wasn't that high up the ladder. His showiness gave his insecurity away. Still, he was a small time rat with a couple big time connections. Marie slipped into the car and turned the tracker in her phone on as she pretended to fumble with her seatbelt. Someone at MacTac would do a GPS round eventually. She hoped.

* * *

The party was in a club on the first floor of an early twentieth century building on the edges of the Financial District, tall and narrow with all sorts of furbelows in every available cranny. It was run down, though, like an operatic diva gone to graze, and not a single cherub was left un-chipped in feature or clothing. Marie, Skids, and Blitzen helped each other up the stamped concrete stairs. Blitzen, higher than a satellite, pressed the doorbell but couldn't quite let go, not even when the door opened. The doorman-- he couldn't be anything else with that brick-wall build-- lifted her clear off the front stoop and held her in midair.

"Pinhead sent us," said Skids.

Marie simpered as best she could.

The doorman grunted and deposited Blitzen into the foyer. She crumpled into one corner, giggling. Marie had to step over her to get in the club. Part of her wanted to call Jones or Thomas so they could escort her to MacTac's one drunk tank. Another part had a feeling this party could be a big break in her case. She gave Blitzen a small wave, said a prayer to the gods of cops and criminals, and walked deeper into the building.

While the exterior was crumbling into disrepair, the sumptuousness of the interior set Marie's heart thudding. Xavier's and its subsidiaries furnished with nothing less than four star, and a few of her cases in Manhattan had involved rich clientele. She recognized high-end furnishing when she saw it. Those Art Deco side tables seemed authentic. That painting looked like something she saw at the MOMA. The men milling about wore bespoke suits or designer jeans. Skids immediately flopped onto the lap of the nearest man. He squeezed her thigh. Marie hung back a bit, scanning the crowd for a safer looking target. Someone who looked like he wasn't packing or had no idea what to do with his dick.

"Pinhead's girls," the doorman said from behind her.

The crowd parted for a man, physically average but with an air of dangerous confidence that made him seem taller and larger around the shoulders. The last time Marie met a man like that, he ended up being the king of a multistate gang.

"Pinhead always knows the most beautiful girls. What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Liz," said Marie.

He actually threw his head back when he laughed. "Of course it is. I forgot you mutants like to take up your own names. Well, Liz, you look like you're pretty fun at a party. You actually know how to use that?" He nodded at her ever-present riding crop.

Marie cocked her hips to one side, dipping her chin to look at him through her reptilian lids. "I sure can, sugar. You been a bad boy?"

"All the time, sweetheart. No other type of boy to be." He placed a hand on her back, leading her deeper into the bowels of the house. "Much as I like your get-up, I think you'd look a lot better in a pretty dress."

"I... don't like to show my skin," said Marie.

"Ah. You mean your lovely complexion." He ran the back of his hand along her arm. Marie held her breath. She could keep her powers at bay for a few minutes, three at the most if she prepped with meditation. As long as this guy didn't want to make out, she'd be fine. If she kept him interested with her dominatrix act, she'd have a good chance of getting info while playing keep-away.

Pulling out the drawl from her childhood, the one she had painstakingly flattened into neutral tones, she said, "I ain't ever heard anyone call it lovely."

"Well, my dear, you can say I'm all for mutant rights. I appreciate your people's individuality and I personally think you've had a bad rap."

"That's... that's mighty nice of you to say."

"But put up or shut-up, right?" He laughed again. "My name's Stefan, by the way. Look, there's no pressure. Enjoy the party, the food, and the goodies. Give a few of my guests a good time. If I like what I see, I promise you'll be living a better life that you are now."

"Yeah? What's that mean?"

"It means this." Stefan spread his arms wide. "Party with the norms, no lines, no limits. The people I know don't just tolerate you; they love you. So get your sweet ass on the dance floor and show these people a thing or two about how mutants party."

Skids hollered from the other end of the room, a bottle of champagne raised in celebration. Amidst cheering, she poured it all over herself and all the others sitting on the couch with her. A flash went off as someone else took pictures. The stereo system thumped more bass as the DJ worked his tech, sending the walls vibrating. The party was a disco ball short of a real good time.

Marie made her way to a spare space on the dance floor. Not too many other bodies writhed out there. This late in the party, no one even pretended to be interested in dancing, at least not vertical dancing with clothing on. A few couples were already making a go of it on the couches by the walls. Absolutely nasty. She was too old and too jaded to think that kind of activity was anywhere near sexy.

Several times, men and women rubbed up against her. Marie eventually learned not to hold her breath. She was covered head-to-toe in pink and black nylon. Unless they pulled her in for a kiss-- a move a few of them tried but Marie was well-versed in gentle rejection-- there was no chance of her absorbing anyone. Occasionally, she used the riding crop on people who couldn't be pushed away, another advantage of having the whole whip and leather get-up. She still sucked at dancing. Good thing no one was paying attention. One of the many advantages of having what Jubilee referred to as badonkadonk; she could just shimmy and people thought it still looked good. 

Marie also observed as she danced. The customers were easy to spot for the most part. They enjoyed themselves with open honesty, drinking, eating, and dancing. In contrast, the entertainment, working girls and boys like she pretended to be, laughed a little too heartily, danced a little too sexily. The bouncers, of course, couldn't crack a smile if their life depended on it. Three men in particular seemed to be in charge. There was Stefan who'd talked to her near the entrance. High class pimps tended to have a salesman-like quality to them thus increasing the sleaze factor inherent in salesmen to begin with. In one of the central couches sat a man in a three-piece suit, smoking a cigarette. A woman on his right, either baseline or non-physically mutated, held a goblet of wine. At some unknown signal, she raised the glass to the man's lips for a sip. A young man on his left massaged his shoulders and pressed soft kisses to his jaw, not that he was paying much attention. In a far corner of the main room, perched on a bench with a bottle of beer, was another man significant only in his blandness. No one could possibly come to a club like this dressed in business casual at best to drink local beer. This was a place to see and be seen.

She already made contact with Stefan, and so had more of a chance of soliciting a conversation. She started to make her way back to him when all the lights snapped on. A whiny mutter went through the party-goers until a voice on loudspeakers shouted, "This is the NYPD. Everyone put your hands up and no one will get hurt."

Marie groaned. Of all the goddamned awful timing! She followed the crowd, pushing to the side exits, away from the invading police force. Stefan had melted from sight as soon as the cops spoke. The man in the three-piece suit was making his way to a side exit, pulling the young man with him. The woman who'd been serving him wine was several feet in front of him, already out the door, the wine glass still in her hand. The only person of interest left was the bland guy in the corner. He still sat on his bench, taking as much interest-- or lack thereof-- in the police raid as he had in the drugged-up gyrating bodies on the dance floor. He met her eye for a moment. Marie looked away immediately. She needed to remember his face but not at the risk of him identifying her as something other than a hooker. 

Blues plugged up the main entrance. Party-goers crammed the two side exits five rows deep; there was no leaving through there for a good ten minutes. A half dozen individuals were making their way up some stairs; she highly doubted the possibility of any rooftop escapes. There really was no other option.

Marie held her hands up as soon as she saw the first cop enter the room. Her undercover op was deep enough that MacTac couldn't clear her in normal raids until such a time when those files could harm her or the op. She sure hoped they had a warm lock-up in this precinct. 


	2. Chapter 2

Home. But not really. After spending the requisite sixteen hours in the drunk tank/vice hold-up, she'd been kicked out. She needed to find a shelter with a free bed, a miracle at this time of the day. Marie hadn't been inside her real apartment for three months. She missed it. She missed having her own bed instead of a sleeping bag between two buggy mattresses. Sleeping with her shoes left outside the sleeping bag would also have been a great but since the last police raid, she couldn't afford to look for stolen shoes any more. She even missed the damn police station. At least the cells were dry. Even shifted back to her normal appearance, she couldn't risk going back to her real life. A compromise was yet another identity, as one of the legion of anonymous homeless lining the alleys of Brooklyn. 

She felt him before she heard him as she walked away from yet another full shelter. Par for the course with Remy Lebeau. "You ain't looking too hot, _sha_."

"Unless you got fifty bucks and a car with a working heater, I ain't talking to you."

"I got better." He stood in front of her. "How's about hot pastrami on rye, cold cream soda, and an SUV where the backseat folds back into a bed?"

"Creepy, as expected. I'll take it."

"I didn't even offer the fifty bucks yet."

"I know where you keep that fifty." Marie tapped her forehead. With his permission, she had absorbed his memories and powers nineteen months and thirteen days ago to break the Senator Trask-Zif case that had made her career in MacTac and arguably the whole of the NYPD. It left her with cravings for fresh seafood, chicory coffee, and an ethical dilemma the size of an elephant. 

Lebeau winced. "That just saps all the magic out of our relationship, _sha_."

"What's with you and this delusion that we have any sort of relationship?" Marie asked as she took his proffered food. She hid her smile by biting into the sandwich.

"I'm a cynical old man that's seen all and been all. Pissing you off entertains me in a way that titty bars never will again."

"Even more creepy but I really need to sleep on a surface that doesn't have fungus." Marie paused. "Wait, when was the last time got your groin swabbed again?"

Lebeau clutched at his heart. "You wound me!"

"Oh good. My night's looking up. Is that it?" She pointed at a matte black SUV with subtle chrome detailing.

"Your chariot, m'lady." He keyed the doors open. "You're a little young to go undercover as a bag lady."

Marie stuffed her mouth full of sandwich to keep from answering.

"That means I'm right, ain't it? You're undercover."

"Pass the soda."

"Say please."

"Pass the soda, _now_."

With a shake of his head, Lebeau popped the soda can tab open and took a sip before giving it to her. "Good thing you're cute, _sha_ , 'cause you are a mean-ass bitch."

"Why, Gambit, that's the nicest thing you've ever said about me."

Lebeau drove past the neon monstrosity of Times Square, using the taxi-heavy traffic to give Marie more time to eat, no doubt. He was so odd that way, equal parts gentleman and dickhead. She strongly suspected he wasn't hugged too much as a child, at least not by his mother. Unsurprising considering he was raised to be the "king of the thieves" according to the memories she'd absorbed from him. What kind of deluded fucks raised a kid to be a king of larceny?

As she licked the last crumbs of rye bread off her fingers, Lebeau said, "You're lookin' into those girls that got killed, hein? The mutant hookers."

"You've got nerve asking me about my cases," said Marie. "You stalk me for months, try to bribe me into assassinating a US senator, put my entire city in mortal danger, hang out at my old school, and now this?"

"You mean giving you food and a warm bed for the night? The horror, the horror."

"I'd trust it more if I didn't know you. What's the Guild's angle in this, Lebeau?"

"The Guild's got nothing to do with this."

"You mean you've quit."

He said nothing. Not that Marie was surprised.

"As long as you're with them, the Guild's involved. I know that. You told me that."

"And I thought what we had was an understanding," he said. "You give me a little information, I give you the bad guys all tied up in a pretty bow."

"You _are_ one of the bad guys!"

"But I don't got to be."

This conversation was going nowhere, as always. "Been a slice, Lebeau. I'll take my chances on the street. I'd give you back the sandwich but I have a feeling you won't miss that pocket change." Marie struggled with the door locks.

Lebeau smacked his head on the steering wheel. "For the love of all that's holy, D'Ancanto. Sleep in the damn car. I'll park it up high and leave you alone for the night. Believe it or not, I ain't so hard up for a fuck that I'll risk your mutation or your layers of hard-earned body odour. Look, I'll even give you the keys."

"What's the catch?"

"Call it payback for keeping your end of the deal."

Marie tilted her head to one side. While her hunger had been satiated, her brain couldn't quite access her memories yet.

"For last August," Lebeau explained. "You coulda used what you got from me to take my family down but you didn't."

Marie didn't have the heart to tell him that she fully intended to bring his family-- The Guild-- down. She had a feeling he knew it anyway. "Hit me."

"Fwahuh?"

"I need you to drop me off at a police station and with this disguise, I'm going to have to look like I was worked over before I resorted to the cops. So hit me."

"Uh--"

Marie threw her hands up. "Come the fuck on! You were happy enough to try to kick my ass last year."

"You hit me first and, as I recall, I _did_ kick your candy ass."

"You wish you could kick my gramma's ass. Look, you want me to punch you first?"

"Woman, you are certifiable!"

Marie decked him in the nose.

Lebeau clutched his face and yowled. "Fucking _ouch_! Not the face, goddammit! I told you before: you can hit anything but my face."

"Go stick your head outside to cool off. It's not broken."

"It stings," he said archly.

"I can make a few more things sting if you don't give me a nice big face bruise." Marie patted her cheek. "C'mon. Right here, swamp rat. Nothing you do can ever really hurt me."

"'Cause you think so little of me."

"Well, yeah. Also, I have access to some healing powers. Comes in handy."

Muttering something like "had to have been crazy to stay on," Lebeau pulled his arm back and let loose a strike to her right cheek. Marie's head bounced off the car's seat. Warmth bloomed over the one side of her face. That really was going to leave a bruise. She smiled.

Lebeau shook his head. "You're nuts, y'know that, _sha_?"

"I am what I am. Drop me off a couple blocks away from the nearest precinct. I can catch some sleep in their drunk tank. It's bigger than the one I left."

"A drunk tank over this nice luxury SUV."

"Well, I sure wouldn't want your latest squeeze to get all jealous," she said.

" _Sha,_ I am a married man."

Marie plucked a strand of red hair out of her seat. "Last I checked, your wife was blonde, preferred Chanel No. 5 over BodyWorks Gardenia Valley spray, and would never wear costume jewellery. There's a plastic cocktail ring in the floor of the back seat."

"You're forgetting the only reason Belladonna don't have her usual lover set up in our house is because you threw him out of a helicopter then put him in jail," he said.

"Your twisted definition of marriage don't interest me. It ain't ever gonna happen. Stick it in your spank bank and leave it the fuck alone."

With a sigh, Lebeau started the engine and turned the SUV towards the station for the Thirteenth Precinct. Marie settled into her seat, savouring a few minutes of warmth.

Then Lebeau had to go and say, "But I _can_ put it in my spank bank, hein?"

"Remy, why do you gotta make me hit you?"

* * *

The 32nd Precinct in Harlem was just far away enough from both Liz's and Baglady Sue's territories for Marie to be anonymous but not quite gentrified enough that a glimpse of anyone making under six-digits per annum would stick out. One of Marie's many disguise bags lay a block away from the precinct: two industrial garbage bags, one with bland civvie gear and a phone, the other with emergency undercover outfits. 

Because the hiding place was close to a police station, she also felt comfortable enough to stash one of her pieces in the alley in a tiny vent shaft twenty feet up. Marie clambered on top of the dumpster, twisted the cover around the one screw that kept the vent in place, then felt around until she found a waterproof bag. Storm would call the gun a crutch due to Marie's rejection of her powers for so many years. Marie preferred to think of her love for firearms as a deep respect for the art of target shooting and the skills of gunmakers. Plus shooting things was ever so much fun.

This particular piece, a Smith & Wesson J-frame wasn't in the standard NYPD arsenal. She had to have it cleared by her captain for undercover work. Hell of a lot of paperwork involved in it, too; technically, the S&W was a concealed weapon. But unlike many mini handguns, it was accurate, reliable, and could take a beating. If Marie had to pick one gun to save her life during this sting, she'd pick this one.

Quickly changing to her civvies, Marie pulled out the emergency phone next. No-nonsense, thirty minutes of prepaid voice, and a few megs of prepaid data. Just enough to check in at the station. Marie dialled Jones' number by heart.

After two rings, Charlotte picked up. "The cheese is old and mouldy but the icebox is empty. Over and out."

"Harty har har."

"How's the glamorous life of a detective second-class? Wanting to kick yourself yet for insisting on this assignment?" 

Marie could imagine one Charlotte Jones leaning back on her chair to cross her legs on her desk. She'd abandoned her beaded cornrows for a more "mature" style of curls cropped so close it was practically a buzz cut. She'd been making noises about bringing back rattails from the 80s. Marie hoped she was joking. Despite the fact that Charlotte was ten years older, the mother of a high school junior, and had trained her from the moment she had an inkling of being more than a beat cop, Marie considered herself the mature one in the partnership.

"I think I might be getting close to a break in the case," said Marie. "I'm heading to the 32nd right now. Could you clear me to use their facilities?"

"Just let 'em ring me up. For real though, girl, how're you holding up? The weather isn't getting any better out there."

"Eh, I'm dealing. It's giving me a lot of ideas about what to hand out next time we do a walk through Mutant Town. Did you know once you get your socks wet, ain't nothing in heaven, hell or Australia that can get you warm again? I'd just about kill my momma for a pair of wool socks and waterproof boots."

"I was more thinking about food. You tend to eat like you've got two hollow legs and a vicious case of tapeworm."

"You get used to starving. I remember that much."

Charlotte didn't answer for a full thirty seconds. "That one of the factoids about your mysterious pre-cop life that I'm never gonna get a full explanation about? Like being an X-Man?"

Marie bit her lip. Charlotte was a friend. A good friend. Had been for some time now. But Marie had held her cards so close to her chest for so long, X-Man or no, that opening up didn't come easy. "Nothing too dramatic. You know I came from down south. I just didn't take a 747 business class seat to get up here. It was a longer, less glamorous route."

"Yeah?" Charlotte was quiet again. Marie heard stuff shuffling in the back ground. "Well. Sorry to hear that, D'ancanto."

"It's all right. Made me the well-adjusted person I am today, right?"

"Girl, you're damn well-adjusted for the fucking Brady Bunch. You at the precinct yet?"

"Just about."

"Right. Hey, Marie, cards on the table: how close are you in this case?"

"I think I might have a lead from that party that got broken up."

"Might. So not a sure thing."

Marie tightened her hold on the phone. "What're you trying to say, Jones?"

"You've been out there three months without any solid leads. I have a bad feeling about this op. And I'm worried about you."

"I'm fine." She tried, unsuccessfully, to swallow a cough.

"I'm not. Do what you can for the most recent body but this op's over."

"You can't pull the plug when I'm so close."

"You're not that close and you're getting sick," said Charlotte. "I'm closing the op, D'Ancanto. Take a couple days off and I'll see you at your desk."

"But--"

Charlotte had already hung up. Marie swore at the dial tone. This conversation wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

Unlike MacTac, the 32nd Precinct actually had a dedicated building. It looked like it might have been made after the Cold War. Marie smashed her phone against the steps of the station so the front pieces fell apart. She stripped the circuits from the casing, pulled out the SIM card, and deposited the plastic remains in a nearby recycling bin. The battery she pocketed; they brought in a few dollars at the recycling depot.

She approached the station desk, smiling like she really meant it. And she did, to come to think of it. Stations felt and smelled alike. This was home sweet home as much as her apartment.

"Hey there. Detective D'Ancanto from MacTac, here to check out a body in your morgue."

The desk jockey looked up. "MacTac, huh? You don't look like a muti--mutant."

Her smiled hardened. "I only pull out my freak during the annual pride parade."

"Your creds?"

"You can call MacTac. Ask for Captain Charlotte Jones. She'll vouch for me."

"That's pretty irregular, Officer."

"I'm MacTac. We're all pretty irregular. It's what makes me a good _detective._ " Marie bit out. "Now you could call Captain Jones right now, get this all cleared up, and I won't have to contaminate you with my nasty X-genes for any longer than we can both stand. Or I can sneeze. Your call."

The desk jockey punched the number. That poor phone would never be the same. "You're cleared," he said, looking about as pleased as he would were he eating his shoe.

"Thanks again for such fine service. You're a credit to your precinct. And y'know what, because I've been slogging in the field for more than a goddamn week in this godforsaken asscrack weather, I'll also be needing you to get me extra-hot coffee with three sugars and one cream, and a maple-dipped doughnut, reheated, and don't you dare tell me there ain't no more 'cause it's only 9 P.M. and I know the Dunkin across the street always bakes 'em fresh around eight in time for the usual run."

"Who'll man the desk?"

"I will." She plonked her butt on the desk. "Can't be that hard. I've been doing this for coming onto seven years. How long have you been at it--" she peeked at his sleeves for his rank-- "officer?"

"I'll get right on it," growled the desk jockey.

Marie smiled. This time, it was all teeth with zero good feelings. "That's ''I'll get right on it, _ma'am_.'"

* * *

Lieutenant Mudaffer led her to the coroner, much to Marie' relief. She didn't think she could handle talking to Sergeant McDouchenozzle tonight, not after dealing with Lebeau and Officer Dipshit at the desk. And her feet were still cold, goddammit. 

"I thought you'd come in earlier," said Mudaffer.

"I had previous engagements," she said. "Ever had one of those lifetimes?"

He grinned. "You chose the wrong profession if you wanted things easy."

"I love my job. I really do. It's just that even with this career, we should have an upper limit of the idiots we're allowed to be exposed to. They're always saying cops are trying to fill quotas right? Well my microphallic ingrate quota has been filled. We need a maximum quota of idiocy. We need to draw a line: this far and no farther. Yea, though I walk through the valley of dickwads, I shall not fear for Legal is behind me and not to fuck my ass sideways."

"Then I'm pretty sure you want to rethink going in the coroner's."

They stopped in front of the double doors. Marie sighed. "I really couldn't've been anything else _but_ a cop."

"Family tradition?"

She gave him a lopsided smile, waved, and pushed through the morgue doors.

The coroner looked up from the stretcher. "Detective D'Ancanto? Jessica Jones."

"Nice to meet you, Dr. Jones."

"Call me Jess."

"Marie." They traded firm, dry handshakes. If the classic Nine Inch Nails playing as background music and the half-empty six-pack of Pabst weren't dead giveaways that she'd like Jessica Jones, that handshake would have sealed the deal.

Jess slid off her stool. "You look like the trustworthy type, Marie. I'm gonna pop outside to grab some cancer. Go ahead and diddle with whatever you want to. Report's on the desk. The vic's on the slab. He came with a bunch of other shit; that's the other slab. If anyone asks, the beers are yours, capiche?"

"And you drank three of them in the five minutes I got here. Gotcha. Go indulge in your disgusting habit."

Jess dimpled her cheeks with two middle fingers. Yep, Marie was really going to like working with her.

On the slab, the body seemed even younger and more vulnerable than before. Half-drained of the Hudson, his body was thinner but not, Marie suspected, at his normal weight yet. Jess had cleaned him well, indicative of her professional thoroughness and the kind of empathy a lot of coroners lost after seeing hundreds of bodies. Regardless, his short fur couldn't hide the Y-incision on his torso. 

Marie leaned forward to get a good look at his face. The instrument used to slice off his nose and ears were sharp. The cleanliness of the cut told her the perpetrator had no hesitation doing so; he knew the strength he needed and felt little to no emotion about it. Hesitation usually left jagged edges. Passion wasn't this precise. No, this was a methodical erasure of identification.

"I figured kitchen knife," said Jess. 

"What did you do, eat the cigarette?"

"Don't knock it 'til you try it." Jess rubbed alcohol gel on her hands as she re-entered. "If you want to get all professional, the perp used a sharp cutting instrument, twelve to sixteen inches long with a wedge shape and a long handle. Like deboning a turkey. Hold the tip of the nose, find the edge of the nose crest, follow the line down through the cartilage. Similar procedure with the ears. Easier actually."

"Sexual activity?"

"Internal exam showed rectal scarring and skin tags typical of past non-consensual anal intercourse. Most recent sexual activity is kinda hard to gauge considering the time of death and the bogginess of the body but I'd wager he prostituted himself regularly."

Marie's throat closed. "Homeless male prostitute. Minor?"

"Maybe, maybe not."

"How old are we talking?"

"Late teens, early twenties. Poor guy didn't have many more years left to him but he definitely was a minor when he was raped and-or started out on the street. Not as malnourished as I'd've thought for his age. Maybe he was a lot prettier before that ass-bastard perp cut his face up." Jess smoothed the boy's hair down. "Incisions removing his penis, fingers, and toes are just as clean. The interesting part is where he's shaved."

Marie's eyes widened. "Shaved?"

"It was hard to tell with all that dirt and the fact that his fur's the same colour as his skin but it's pretty obvious along his back. Help me slide him, will you?"

Marie now knew why Jess used the extra wide slab. Fumbling with the sling would have been more work than it was worth, especially the older model sling in this morgue. Using a plastic sheet and a lot of coordination, she and Jess shifted the body onto its stomach.

"That's... different."

"Yup."

Swaths of fur, some six inches in diameter had been shaved none too gently off the vic's back. Some smaller patches even looked torn, like the perp had pulled hair out. The patches had nicks and pinpoint rashes, the kind seen often when dry-shaving. And there was no readily identifiable pattern to the shaving. It just looked like the perp had yanked and shaved wherever his hands landed.

Marie pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Not what you're looking for?" asked Jess.

"Hard to say," she said. "The mutilation style's consistent with my case. Previous vics were all women though. And there was absolutely no signs of passion with the previous killings."

Jess straightened. "Previous vics? How many? Are we talking serial killer?"

"Ugh, don't put it that way. 'Serial killer' sounds too sexy to the damn media."

"Well, hell, not them again."

"Them always."

"And there were four other mutant vics before him. All women until now. Also, until now, the perp was more methodical. Organized thinking, removing all ID markers."

Jessica arched her eyebrows. "Organized like Martha Stewart or organized like pinstripe suits and Tommy guns?"

"That's the billion dollar question." Marie turned her attention to the slimmer table close by. This one held a few dozen items, labelled in Jess' scrawl, and organized presumably from those found at the head of the body to the foot. Various river grunge-- sticks, pebbles, plastic-- were in small piles sprinkled amongst the larger items. The vic's shirt, his only article of clothing, was spread flat, dotted with labelled pins to mark stains or holes. The oversized canvas bag that had held the body on its short trip down the river was also laid flat where the vic's pants would have been. More labelled pins marked areas Marie pegged as bloodstains. They weren't very large considering the amount of mutilation inflicted on the vic. So, the perp possibly cut the body up somewhere else, maybe even leaving it alone for a while before transporting it in the duffle.

She pointed to a small blue doll at the bottom of the table. "What's this?" 

"Oh, I found that at the bottom of the duffle," said Jess. 

"May I?"

"Rinse, glove, and party on, Wayne. I don't think the ones you have are standard."

"Nope, they're more of a personal preference," said Marie as she pulled her everyday gloves off in exchange for the morgue's disposable version. 

Gingerly, she lifted the doll off the table. The doll was made entirely of blue felt with black felt spikes as hair and now-grimy blue eyes. It had pointy blue ears, little pointy fangs, and an arrow-shaped tail. Its hands and feet ended in three digits. Its coat once had sequins, and its striped waistcoat and pants badly needed a wash. Even in this soiled cartoon depiction, Marie instantly recognized who the doll was supposed to be.

Kurt Wagner. Once the Amazing Nightcrawler of the Berlin Circus, now a teacher at Massachusetts Academy, a subsidiary of the Xavier's Institute.


	3. Chapter 3

Her Harley-by-way-of-Kawasaki rat bike, Quasi, cranked down the Xavier's Institute driveway. The cobbled motorcycle stood apart from the shiny town cars and the student clunkers. Marie liked it that way. Logan liked the bike too which meant she did something right when she put it together. One of these days, she'd take up Logan's offer to come refurbish Cyclops' Ducati. That would mean making more trips up to Westchester, of course, but somehow, she couldn't picture the Ducati outside of the mansion's grand garage. It was Cyclops' bike. It should stay at the mansion with him. 

She parked in the garage to give herself and the Ducati a few minutes of alone time. She was so shiny, sexy, and dainty next to Quasi. "They treating you all right, here, Duchess? You tell them you ain't all show, y'hear? You actually need to strut your stuff once in a while."

"Maybe if you show up more often, there'd be someone to take her out."

Marie twirled around, beaming. "Logan!" She took a running leap into his arms.

He caught her, his expression bordering on genuine laughter. "Hey kid. You smell."

"Thanks."

He sniffed again and put her down. "Really, you reek. Like an electrocuted snake thrown into a dumpster."

"That's... oddly appropriate."

He gave her the side-eye. "You been using Magneto's powers? You know how he messes with your head when you let him loose in there."

"No more than you do," said Marie. Hurt flashed through Logan's face. She mentally smacked herself and her stupid fapping mouth. What was it with this case and her not-so-inner bitch letting loose on her friends? Time for damage control. "Like with the cigars. Y'know I hate smoking but when I use your powers, I feel like lighting one up."

Logan smirked. "You can't have any of mine. I swear Ro sends a rain cloud over me every time I even pull one out. I could be out past the lake and it'll rain on me."

"It's a filthy habit."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Kissing guys who smoke is like licking ashtrays."

Crossing his arms, Logan asked. "Exactly how many smokers have you kissed to get to that conclusion?"

Grinning, Marie linked her arm with his and leaned her head on his shoulder. "Don't worry, Daddy, I always come back before curfew."

"Doc's been asking for you. Frost, too."

"Work's been keeping me busy." 

"Something you're not telling me?" he asked. The downside to having Logan as a parent figure was that he smelled every lie she'd ever told, even when it was partially truth.

"Undercover job. I'd tell you more but I'd have to kill you."

"Hrmph."

"Hrmph?"

"You're visiting because it's finally over and you need to use the horse troughs to wash up. All right. I'll get them ready."

Marie punched his arm. "Ha ha. Actually, I need to talk to Storm about something."

"Hrmph."

"Again with the 'hrmph.'"

"Darlin', the last time you and Storm willingly talked to each other with your inside voices, it was to stop an international incident."

"Nothing with as much paperwork this time around but I'd say it's just as serious," said Marie. "Is she in?"

"Should just be finishing up brunch."

"Business brunch. Must be important."

Logan grunted. Marie slowed her stride.

"You're even more emphatically monosyllabic today. Don't tell me you're actually disagreeing with one of Storm's business ventures."

"It's my job to disagree with her ventures. This one's not for business."

This time Marie's jaw dropped. "Storm had someone overnight?! For sex?!"

Logan slapped his face with his open palm. "Don't they teach you tact in police school?"

"No, really, Storm having sex is like... like my mother having sex. Worse. It's like my mother, my kindergarten teacher, and my pastor all having sex. Together. In one of those big Catholic churches with the naked-people-smiting paintings staring down on them."

"Have I got some high school photos to show you," he muttered.

They entered the mansion proper, the clunk of their boots transitioning into softer thumps as the flooring changed from tile to hardwood. Marie imagined the Xavier mansion felt very much like this during the professor's childhood-- exquisitely decorated but quiet. Nothing at all like when she went to school there, when every wooden panel had a gouge and nothing remotely breakable was set out as decoration. It was homier then but just as beautiful. The veneer of old money had faded into the warmth of a home.

Now the mansion was very much a presence and Marie understood why it had to be so. Xavier's School for the Gifted was now The Xavier Institute, bastion of mutant rights. The Grey Clinic in the west wing was the first and finest mutant clinic and research hospital. Currently housing the worst cases of Alcatraz Legacy Disease, or ALD, Dr. MacTaggert and her small crew of nurses and research assistants treated as many mutants as they could. They also consulted around the clock with any medical facility needing information about treating mutant patients. The former pool house just past the gardens and beside the lake had been transformed into a hostel of sorts. The rest of the east wing were offices dedicated to lobbying for mutant rights, creating mutant-transition curricula for schools nation-wide, and other social advocacy work. And underneath, of course, was the X-Men headquarters. It was a damn important place. Still, Marie missed the school.

They entered the kitchen which had thankfully escaped most of the redecorating tornado. Marie supposed even the most hardened designer recognized the emotions steeped into the walls. The island's granite top had fewer nicks and a several smaller tables replaced the six-seater beside the kitchen's bay window but otherwise everything was just as it was.

Storm sat at on the island bench, ankles crossed, lazily stirring cream and sugar into a cup of coffee. Her guest-- Marie had no doubt this was _the_ guest-- sliced strawberries and grapes with a sort of unfamiliar grace; he obviously wasn't used to doing kitchen chores but he did the job competently. Storm turned her attention to prepping a second cup of coffee and that was when Marie knew this wasn't a fling. Few actions spoke of intimacy as well as knowing how your lover took their coffee.

Logan cleared his throat. It sounded like he was clearing a porcupine out of his gullet.

Storm and her guest turned. "Oh! Marie. What a pleasant surprise. We haven't seen you in a while."

Marie was more taken aback by the fact that Storm actually seemed to mean what she said maybe in a way. "Yeah, well, Dr. MacTaggert's been on my ass about a check-up and something came up with work that I think you might know something about so I figure kill two birds with one stone."

Nodding solemnly, Storm said, "Detective, you know the way to my office. I shall meet you in a moment."

"Sure thing," Marie said. With Storm's back to her, she made an engagement-ring gesture to Logan, who shrugged and signalled "Quit it."

Storm's office was on the second floor, in what used to be a small bedroom and a shared study area. She shut the door; the tumblers clicked in place. Marie leaned back on her chair, making the hinges creak. With the area rugs and the plants, the couches and the kafrillion artfully hung gifts around the walls, sounds should have been muffled. Storm had a way of moving with space instead of through it which emphasized how loud everyone else was in comparison.

"How can I help you, detective?"

Marie took her tablet out of its case and pulled out the picture of the Nightcrawler doll. She slid the tablet across the table. "Do you recognize this?"

Storm visibly stiffened. Her eyes went glassy. "Where did you find this?" she demanded.

"I'm sorry, I can't say until you confirm whether or not you recognize it."

"This is Illyana Rasputin's Bamf doll."

"Illyana... Pete's baby sister?"

"Yes."

"Is she a mutant?"

"She has the x-gene but her powers have not catalysed. How did you--" Storm closed her eyes and swallowed. "Please tell me you are not a homicide detective."

Man, Marie felt like red shit. "Um. Violent crimes, actually. Homicide is under that umbrella. The good news is the body--"

"There is a body?!"

"-- I found this with is most definitely not that of a little girl. The bad news is that if this doll is Illyana's then she's been in contact with whoever killed my vic and I'm sure I don't gotta tell you how dangerous that'd be." Marie took the tablet back. 

"Illyana went missing four and a half weeks ago," said Storm. "Emma Frost contacted Boston PD as soon as possible but they have no leads that I'm aware of. She flies down here fairly frequently to use Cerebro for the search."

"Can you give me the contact of the detective in charge of Illyana's case in Boston?"

"Yes, of course. I can call him right now."

Marie snatched a look at her watch. "That would really help actually. I'm in a bit of a time crunch."

"Xavier's will do anything at all to aid in this case."

"Thanks. And I'm actually going to need you to leave the room while we talk. Confidentiality and all."

Storm stopped in mid-dial, looking like she wanted to protest but, instead, dipped her chin. "I understand. But Marie, you must know that Illyana is family. The X-Men protect their own."

"And you gotta understand that we need to do this through MacTac or else we'll have half the country breathing down our backs about vigilante justice and registration," said Marie. "Unless this is about not trusting me to do my job."

The line on the other end picked up. Saved by the bell. Storm connected the call to the desktop computer and left the room.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Marie had more questions in exchange for exactly one answer. Yes, the doll looked to be Illyana's. It disappeared the same day she had. The detective in Boston had no leads and little hope but as a big fan of MacTac thanks to Mayor Worthington, he'd been happy to allow Marie access to all his reports.

She looked at the clock again. She had to be back to in the city by nightfall. She called Massachusetts Academy. It was time to interview a friend.

The receptionist chirruped, "Massachusetts Academy, the school of tomorrow, how may I direct your call?"

"Is Pete Rasputin in?"

"He sure is, may I please ask who's calling?"

"Marie D'Ancanto, NYPD MacTac. It's pretty important that I talk to him or to Anne, please."

"Oh. Omigosh, is this about Illyana?"

"Sorry, I can only talk to the Rasputins."

"Omigosh, I'll get him right away. Don't hang up!" The phone clattered for half a second before the receptionist remembered to put her on hold with the requisite classical music. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Marie had to grin. How did that girl stay on with Emma Frost as headmaster?

The other line clicked back on. "Hello? Marie?" Pete's bass voice shook slightly from running or nerves.

She modulated her own tone to try to calm him down. "Heya, Pete. Been a while."

"Yes, we've been... there's been a lot going..." His voice cracked, honest to God cracked, and right then and there Marie made a promise to herself that whoever it was that took Illyana, whether it was the asshole in her current case, or some other version of jizzmould, she would find them and make them hurt tenfold for making such a sweet man cry.

"God, Pete, I'm so sorry for what you're going through. I truly am."

"Thank you, Marie. Your thoughts are appreciated."

"How's Anne?"

"She's... she's not so good. You know my brother, Mike, died when we were in high school. This is bringing all of it back."

"I'm so, _so_ very sorry."

He acknowledged her condolences with a nod. "You have something about Illyana?"

"I'm working a case right now and I found something I need you to identify," said Marie. "Does the phone you're on have video?"

"I can transfer to another one. Hold on."

Marie pulled up the picture of the Nightcrawler/Bamf doll on her tablet again. It was such a cute little doll. She could exactly imagine Anne making it for her youngest. Pete Rasputin's mom was everyone's mom back in school. Her official job title was catering manager-- a fancy name for cook that allowed the Professor to pay her more-- but she was also the freshest taste of normalcy the students got. Most of them came from abusive homes or had run away so long ago that memories of a loving family were barely dreams. Anne made hot cocoa from scratch and bought magnets to post artwork on the fridge. She smelled like rich stew on a winter day and when she talked, with that ever so slight Russian accent, her sincerity was never in doubt. Pete came by his sweetness honestly.

A conference window popped up on Storm's desktop monitor. Marie immediately recognized signs of stress on Pete's face. The bags under his eyes only emphasized the gauntness of his cheeks.

"Oh, sugar," said Marie. She touched the screen where his forehead would have been.

"We are surviving," he said. "We try not to lose hope because losing hope means we believe she's gone. I can't believe it. I would know."

"I hope you're right." She held up the tablet. "Do you recognize this?"

Pete made a sound like she had punched him in the stomach. 

"Be very sure. I'll flip through the other pictures so you can get a good look."

"Wait, before you do, tell me: does the doll's left foot have a slightly off-colour patch at the heel? It would be circular and a darker blue than the rest."

Marie checked. Now she felt like she was the one that had been punched. "Yeah."

"Mom made Bamf for Yana when she was five; Kurt was her favourite babysitter. She carried that doll around by that heel so tightly, she pulled the seams open. Mom couldn't find any more felt of the same colour so she used another shade and told Yana that it was one of Kurt's tattoos." He rubbed his mouth and jaw. "Where did you find it?"

"We pulled a body out of the river a couple days ago," Marie said softly. "The body's male so we know it's not her. But the doll was in the same bag as the body. It could mean nothing, Pete. It could be a coincidence."

"But you don't think so."

She bit her lip. "I'm going to need you to tell me a story, Pete. Tell me all about the day Illyana disappeared. Don't try to get every little detail out, don't worry about getting things in order. Just tell me your story."

He nodded. "Yana's school is a little less than a quarter mile away from MassAcad. She's only ten; the youngest we can take in is twelve but we did intend to transfer her for sixth grade. I usually walk her to school because Mom's still busy with breakfast. In the afternoons, either myself or Mom walk her home. When we get a little busy, one of her classmates' moms walk her home. A lot of families take the same route. They know we're from a mutant school, that I'm a mutant and Yana probably is as well and they're all right with it. At least as far as I know. Her school has a very good mutant-transition program and works quite closely with MassAcad."

"You think her disappearance had something to do with being a latent mutant?"

"It was my first thought, yes. But everyone has been so helpful." Pete sighed and ran both hands through his hair. "That day, I was supposed to take her home but I was running slightly late. I called ahead to the school and they agreed to include her in the after-school care even though I would only be ten or fifteen minutes. I texted Yana and told her to not to go home with her friends. I arrived at the school at three o'clock, exactly fifteen minutes late. There were children on the playground. The teacher monitoring them was caring for a child who had skinned his knee falling. I waved at her and looked for Yana. I couldn't see her anywhere."

"What about the teacher?"

"She said she last saw her on the jungle gym with a small group of girls. We asked the girls, and they say she had left to get Bamf out of her bag to introduce him to them."

"Where was her bag?"

"With everyone else's, along the wooden planks lining the playground. Her bag was still there but Bamf wasn't."

"Where else did you check?"

"Inside the classrooms, in all the bathrooms, everywhere in the school. We even recruited the older kids and some parents to call out for her on the grounds. Then outside the grounds. That's when we called the police. We kept searching while we waited for them to arrive."

"How much time passed between realising she was gone and calling the police?"

"Should we have called sooner?" Pete asked. "I should've called as soon as-- I had this feeling when I couldn't see her. Like the bottom dropped out of my stomach and my heart was trying to barrel out my throat."

"You did everything right," Marie hurried to assure him. "I just needed time frames. Keep going."

"We continued the search that evening. So many people came out to help. Even some students from MassAcad. Mom... I told Mom to stay at home. She wasn't up to the search. Mrs Frost even flew down to Westchester to use Cerebro but she said Yana's mind fuzzed in and out."

"But Emma Frost found her biosignature," said Marie. "That's a good sign."

"I know," said Pete. "But she can only search every few days. Each time, it's the same. She says she gets smoke trails at best but she can't triangulate a location."

"As long as she can still feel Illyana, I'm hopeful."

"Me, too."

"When was the last time she searched?"

"Two days ago."

Marie let out a long sigh. "Okay, so when I found the doll, Illyana was still alive. Hold on to that, okay, buddy?"

* * *

With minutes to spare from her trip upstate, Marie decked herself out as Liz, stashed her civvie clothes in the nearest dumpster-- there went a perfectly good set of jeans-- and sashayed to her usual block on the eastern-most border of Mutant Town. She waved to Skids across the street. Tonight, Liz wore a translucent black catsuit with a pair of fingerless gloves and boots with steel stiletto heels. Her riding crop hung from her wrist; she ran it along the windows or street lamps occasionally as she sauntered up and down her turf.

When a police cruiser came around, she did as the others-- turned her head away and walked more deliberately. That didn't deter her followers; they pulled up and flashed their lights. She threw her arms up in the air and yelled, "Oh come on!"

Two cops stepped out of the car. "You're going to have to come with us, miss."

"Why? I'm busy. I gotta go home."

"I'm sure you'd get there faster if you stop turning around once you hit the end of the block," said one cop.

"Gimme a break, guys, I was tired. I got lost."

"Lost on your way home?"

"I said I was tired!" she snapped.

"You can get some rest over at the station then."

"But I wasn't doing anything!"

"Then this'll take no time at all." They zip-cuffed her hands in front of her and led her into the cruiser. Marie saw Skids watching from her hiding place. She let out a sigh, resisting entering the patrol car only to be ornery. Once she was in, she dropped the petulant act.

"Really, guys, what's this about?" she asked.

Everett Thomas and Bob Henshaw, both MacTac officers, threw sheepish grins over their shoulders. "Sorry, D'Ancanto, Captain's orders," said Thomas.

"This op's finished, remember? From that time when we raided the club? It was only a three nights ago," Henshaw added.

"I kind of took Jones' words as a suggestion."

"You're real brave and real stupid."

"I'm so close," Marie said. "I just _know_ the guy who threw that party the other night is connected to the murders. Just let me off this one time so I can make contact again--"

Thomas piped in. "Captain Jones said, and I quote, 'Tell D'Ancanto to get her obsessive, overachieving, slap-happy, ex-freedom fighting tuckus out of that death metal Hallowe'en costume or I'll throw you both into some fishnet stockings.' Endquote."

"There are three dead mutants in our city. Soon there could be a fourth. And this one might be ten fucking years old so I don't care what I have to do, I'll do it if it means we catch our asshole!"

Henshaw and Thomas exchanged a look. "Ten years old?" Henshaw repeated.

"Yeah. New evidence from the last body."

"Does Jones know about it?"

"She will as soon as you two report it. Get her to contact Dr. Jessica Jones at 32nd Precinct for a copy of her report. I'll hand in details about my discovery as soon as you idiots let me get back to my spot."

Henshaw let out a long breath, right out of his diaphragm. "You are a pain in the fucking assets, D'Ancanto. Turn us around, Thomas."

She smiled at them both. "Thanks. And really, Henshaw? You can say 'fucking' but not 'ass?' What's with that?"

"I knew D'Ancanto when she was a beat cop," Henshaw told Thomas. "Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, opening doors for her elders and shit. A real Girl Scout. I blame MTV."

Marie smacked her head on the backrest. Twenty whole minutes she'd have to endure this. Truly, her job required many sacrifices.


	4. Chapter 4

Considering the state of her investigation, Marie found herself anticipating a meeting with Charlotte Jones. They hadn't found time to really chat since Charlotte's promotion and she wanted her mentor's thoughts on the op. The subway took Baglady Sue out to the West Village. Where Baglady Sue disembarked, Detective D'Ancanto boarded fifteen minutes and a lap around a city block later, this time on a train for Elizabeth, New Jersey. 

Charlotte was already seated at a booth in a diner long ago established as a cop hang-out. Marie ordered a cream soda and a pastrami on rye heavy on the greens and sauerkraut as soon as the server came over.

"How do you know they do pastrami on rye?" asked Charlotte.

"All east coast diners have to do pastrami on rye," Marie said. "Not to do so would be un-American. How's your chilli, captain?"

"About as spicy as ketchup. Cut the pleasant small talk, D'Ancanto. It's creeping me out. I feel like you're only being nice to me so you can stab me in the front. And it's Acting Captain." Charlotte grimaced over her bowl. "If I have to work this desk any longer than Harper's goddamn four months of LOA, I'm going to go postal. It won't be pretty. Might involve siccing my cooking on everyone. What've you got?"

"A way to go deep."

"Considering your op, it's really hard not to turn that into an off-colour joke."

"Can't. Remember the sexual harassment presentation from HR?" Marie's order arrived. She thanked the server and bit into the sandwich with gusto. Juices ran down her fingers. She chewed slowly, eyes closed. Undercover as a homeless person sucked donkey balls. 

"What've you got as an excuse to continue with your idiocy? Remember, I trained you when you were a rookie. I know the depths to which your idiocy can sink and, girl, you're showing signs of digging an idiocy basement."

"I got invited to a party."

"And there's the door to the basement."

Marie cut off further comment with an upward slash of her sandwich-holding hand. Sauerkraut juice spattered the table. "Hookers everywhere, heavy on the mutant fetishism, only slightly outnumbered by the baggies of bud and lines of coke."

"Despite my better judgment, I'm going to ask you to continue."

"Prostitution ring headed by organized crime. My best guess is bratva; they're pros at that sort of thing. Plus some of the guys sounded like they were speaking Russian."

"You're sure?"

"Well, it wasn't Spanish or Cantonese and the last Cosa Nostra family that actually spoke something other than English was in the seventies. So that narrows the criminal families down some. I figure, the old Yellow Brick Road of America route. We don't know what the state of mutants are in Russia and the other Eastern European countries. Maybe it sucks, maybe it's the same as here, maybe it doesn't matter. You get any bright-eyed, bushy-tailed teenager to believe you're going to give them opportunities in the States, they're going to jump at it."

Marie grew more animated as she spun her theory out.

"Ten years ago, the biggest porn kink was gang-banging Russian or Asian women. Maybe this year, it's mutants. This group jumps on an opportunity to get a whole fucking boot into a rising niche industry. God knows if they run out of ways to ship in the goods, there are plenty of mutants on the street that no one would miss. Promise them food, shelter, and drugs, and they're think they're living the high life until they're worn to bits. Then maybe they toss them back into the streets for the loose change crowd."

Charlotte rested her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers under her chin. "Say you're right. Why kill them?"

Marie studied her sandwich. "That's an excellent question. Bet if I went deep into this op, I'd be able to get you the answer."

"I have no doubt you'd be able to convince these guys to get you in. You're forgetting one miniscule, inconsequential detail in all of this."

"My powers?"

"Gold star. How're you going to convince them to bring you into their stable if you can't touch any other their customers? Not to mention powers like that are rare. With the right ears, someone's gonna connect the dots."

"I'm... working on that."

Putting down her spoon, Charlotte said, "You've got a week to work on it. Then you're pulling out for real. And if you don't pull out, I'm suspending you without pay for a week."

Marie's jaw dropped. "What?!"

"Just kidding. I've always wanted to know if going on a middle management power trip felt as slimy as it looks. It does. I have to take a shower now." 

"This would be so much easier if I could control my powers and absorb parts of their memories."

"Even if the use of your powers didn't need a warrant, I still wouldn't let you on account that it affects you more negatively than it affects the scumbags you touch." Charlotte wagged her finger at Marie. "One week to figure out how to make this work. Then you either call in from the inside or close the op."

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am." Marie saluted.

"I'd believe that more if you didn't just use your middle finger. I've gotta go. I have a freaking budget meeting to attend. Kill me." Charlotte tossed her napkin at Marie's face. Marie caught it neatly. "One week." Under her breath, she added, "I'm almost afraid of what you'll come up with."

* * *

Charlotte had good reason to be afraid. Marie herself couldn't quite believe what she was about to do either. She stared outside her high-rise Manhattan hotel room, waiting for Remy Fucking Lebeau. He never arrived on time for their meetings. Sometimes he'd be waiting for her, already half-way through a movie; sometimes, she'd be ready to pack it up before he came. Today, he clocked in at six minutes after the agreed meeting time. Must have been a slow day.

"I got a treat for us today," he said, balancing a trio of paper bags in one arm while this other hand flicked the key card into a side pocket. "Four-course Caribbean meal and 'Delicatessen' by Jean Jeunet. Same guy who did 'Amelie' only as a slasher film. 'Course, Jeunet's early work verges on so-weird-it's-good territory so it ain't our usual fare but I think you'll like it."

"I need something from you," Marie said before he could set the table.

He winked. "I knew it wouldn't take long for you to fall for me, _sha._ Great take out, great local wine, and obscure B-movies are a guaranteed panty-peeling combination."

Marie let her head thunk on the hotel's small but exquisitely set dining room table. "Lebeau, don't make this any harder than it has to be."

Lebeau pulled containers of food out of the over-sized paper bags. "You always need something from me, Detective, and I always get something from you. It's why we do this thing every month."

"This is kind of different from the usual information gathering deal."

"So you want dinner, too? You're starting to get expensive."

Rolling her eyes upward, Marie said, "I'm perfectly happy with information drop-offs. You're the one who insists on this whole production."

"I got a reputation to protect, _sha._ Even with the protection you and your X-Men friends give me, Belle's people have me under watch. I hang around a mailbox for no reason, they get suspicious. I check into a posh hotel room for a couple hours looking prepped for sex, and they take a coffee break."

"You have got to be the weirdest snitch in NYPD history."

"Nothing but the best for MacTac." With the table arranged to his specifications, Lebeau turned the movie on then pulled out a chair, bowing at the waist as he did so. He pushed it in when she sat and unfurled a paper napkin for her lap, his politeness exaggerated for effect. 

Despite herself, Marie smiled. Not only was Lebeau the weirdest snitch in NYPD history, he was also the most charming. Damn him. Since she'd absorbed him before, she could see through all his tricks so most of the time, she could zone him out and just enjoy the free meal. Neither did she have any illusions about his motivation. Lebeau only gave her information about rival gangs, people who were in the way of the Guild's expansion. Without them, his syndicate could have free reign over the east coast. Sometimes, however, some very rare times, Marie also enjoyed his company. Few people could match her insult for insult. And the man really did have excellent taste in movies.

They demolished the first course-- a savoury plantain dish-- before Lebeau started talking again. "You wanna look for a CNRW shipping container coming into the port tomorrow. Scheduled to come in by noon and take the train up to Canada. They're carrying house decorations like pillows and duvets stuffed with certified organic heroin. Deal is to trade it with Hell's Angels in Montreal for an equal weight in pot though if you ask me, Montreal marijuana ain't worth the papers it's smoked in. You want good Canadian product, you go over to Whistler. All that crisp mountain air's good for the buds."

"I'll pass that to DEA. Anything we can use?" asked Marie.

"Always. Have a look at the managerial staff in the port. Word is, someone in middle management can make you forget things. Kinda explains why so much contraband goes through there."

"Goddammit. I'll send word about that, too." 

"May want to give any friends you got in Virginia a heads-up on MS-13 recruiting like it's going out of style. Don't know what they're planning yet but I smell cannon fodder."

Lebeau had a lot of information today. Marie scribbled it all down on her napkin using a short hand she'd developed in police academy. At a point in the movie, she had moved her chair closer to Lebeau's to see the television more clearly. He had his arm around the back of her chair as always. Normally, she'd ignore it-- Lebeau simply could not turn himself off and would even pull that move on extremely straight men. Her undercover assignment and the favour she needed to ask made her a bit more sensitive to his arm touching her shoulder.

"So, about that favour," Marie began.

He never took his eyes off the television. "Another favour, detective? At this rate, you gonna give me carte blanche."

"Not those type of questions. Exactly. It's more like... things that you're really... I know you..." She huffed, blowing her white bangs out of her eyes. The more tentative she was about this damn thing, the more power he'd have over her in this twisted deal. "I need to get hired as an S&M hooker. A really good one. Seeing as how you're an expert in their services, kinky or otherwise, I figured you could give me some pointers."

That... was probably not the best route to take. Lebeau turned his head to stare at her, his silence heavy. Marie started to kiss her case farewell when suddenly, he let out a bark of laughter.

"Let me get this straight: you want me to give you tips on being porny?"

"Fuck you."

"Hopefully one sweet day, _sha._ Going to be sooner more'n later if this conversation is any indication."

"If you can't or won't help, then fuck it, I'll just--"

"I didn't say I wouldn't help," Lebeau said. "But you gotta know I don't do charity and I've already got one of your IOUs."

"And unless your lovely family down south has had a real drastic attitude adjustment towards narcs in the past nineteen months, I got one of yours, too," Marie shot back. "What would the wifey say when she finds out who helped put her lover in jail?"

"You ain't gonna tell. You actually believe in honour and oaths. Make a good Thief outta you."

"I'm sure in your twisted mind that's a compliment but I mean it with all my heart when I say, ew." 

She rubbed the vein over her right temple, the one she felt throbbing all the way down her back. She had to get him with something even more powerful than the idea of having a cop owing favours. There had to be something rattling around in his absorbed memories. Marie poked at the compartments in her mind. Usually, she wanted those memories to stay closed. She needed them closed, actually, to stay sane. Lebeau's memories in particular remained sealed under several other layers of memories. The memories she absorb didn't just crop up; they could meld with her own personality, colouring her very self. To this day, she suspected aspects of her personality were transplanted from Logan or Magneto or whoever else was rattling in her brain before she took Novomane to negate her powers. Some personalities were strong. Lebeau's took a day of heavy meditation to banish.

But Illyana or some other poor girl might be out there. Marie poked the memory boxes open and braced herself.

_He pushed the swing. His little girl shrieked with joy, raising her dimpled hands to the sky. Her pink hair came loose of its ribbons. This one was going to be a risk-taker, just like him, and he loved her all the more because--_

_\-- ran, looking back to make sure his cousin was at his heels. "Hurry, Etienne!"_

_"Wait for me, Remy!_ "

_"Run_ faster, _dammit!"_

_The Pig's men swarmed the boat. Remy dove overboard. He thought he heard Etienne do the same--_

_\-- the little ones ran about, laughing like kids should. He tried to think about the upgrades he could make to his place, to several of his places, and maybe that Takashi Murakami he'd had his eye on for a while. But, damn, these people worked helped street kids. Shit, shit, shi--_

Marie snapped back to the present. Her knuckles were white around her eating utensils. "There's a little girl in danger," she blurted out.

Lebeau snorted.

"I'm telling the truth. Listen, you were right about me going undercover to look for the guy killing off hookers. The last body we found was a boy just barely out of his teens. There's also evidence that whoever killed him might have grabbed a ten year old girl. Her name's Illyana. She's sweet as an angel with a mom who loves her to bits and a big brother who thinks she lights the stars every night."

"Pour it on any thicker, it'd frost a cake."

"What if it was your own daughter out there?" Marie snarled.

"You leave my daughters out of this," Lebeau's voice softened to a whisper so icy, she could've sworn Bobby was in the room. "You just erase them right out of that soul sucker you call a brain. They're not part of any bargain between you and me."

"There's someone, possibly several someones, out there killing young mutant prostitutes. To fuck with who owes who. Do this because those scumbuckets need to be stopped."

Nothing from the other end. Marie held her breath. His arm was still slung along the back of her chair. His thumb tapped out a frenetic beat so close to her shoulder, she felt the hairs on her body rise. Suddenly, he withdrew the arm and stuck it in his pocket. Marie tensed and put her hand on her lap, closer to her holster. He hadn't pulled a gun on her since the first time they met when he broke into her apartment. But just in case...

Lebeau pulled out his phone instead and tapped on the screen. Seconds later, Marie's own phone vibrated.

"I just texted you a location safe from my people and yours," said Lebeau. "How long you got until contact?"

"A week before my captain shuts the op down. Maybe three days to get in."

"Then we got no time to lose. Meet me there by seven tonight."

* * *

Next, she met up with Pete in the Museum of Modern Art. The meeting couldn't possibly end on a better note than the one with Lebeau; she _was_ going to be talking about his missing little sister. But Pete didn't know half as many vulgar phrases as Lebeau so at least the conversation would seem half-way civilised.

Pete waited for her just past the lobby. He stood column-straight with his hands folded behind him and his legs shoulder's width apart: the stance of a warrior at ease. In Pete's case, the stance was a result of years of training to control his strength. When a six-foot-seven teenager made of steel tripped, the mansion usually ended up with a new doorway.

Marie stuck her hands in her hoodie's pockets and approached him. "Imagining your next piece on that wall?"

A smile flashed on his lips. "Imagining this coming May when I'll be part of a show here."

"Really? Damn, Pete, congratulations!"

"Thanks. It's a group show and I think I might have been a last minute addition--"

"The MOMA's still the MOMA. You should be proud of yourself."

He shrugged and ducked his head down because he was Pete and thus clinically incapable of taking a compliment. "It's not very busy today. We can talk."

Marie followed him through an archway covered in swirling glass. "So, exactly how much work do you do for the basement these days?"

"Hardly any. They have many more interested people these days."

"So, training-wise, you're kind of rusty."

He nudged her with his elbow. "The training never goes away. Not when Cyclops is training you."

"Oh man, even now, I wake up on Saturdays feeling like I should go to the gym or something."

"I _do_ go to the gym. And when I don't, I don't get mad at myself; I get disappointed."

"Remember when Bobby tried to short the Danger Room out by icing everything and tried to blame it on growing pains?"

"The best part was when Scott made him clean it all up with a mop then continued with training anyway."

"No, the best part was when Kitty beat on Bobby for ruining all the programming she'd put into the Danger Room the night before." Pete suddenly looked abashed at bringing Kitty and Bobby up.

Now it was Marie's turn to nudge him with her elbow. "That was years ago. I'm over it."

"Events in high school can affect your whole life," he said. "Maybe not in the way most people think with the true-love boyfriend and the group of friends you think will stay together forever, but it _is_ a phase of major self-evolution. Of all people, we mutants must be aware of that."

"True enough." They turned a corner and entered a room filled with Native American work made out of sneakers and plastic picnic chairs. "Are you busy these days? With your work?"

"I'm as busy as I need to be."

"No scheduled appearances, guest lectures, things like that?" Marie asked for clarification.

"A few interspersed over the next two months and then I'll be working straight for the show in May. Why do you ask?"

Marie stopped in front of a ceremonial mask. "The case I'm working on right now, the one that might be related to Illyana's disappearance, requires me to go undercover. I need someone to act as go-between for me and MacTac. I can't use anyone from work because they can be outed pretty easily. Even the X-Men are getting recognizable, especially to mutant groups. You have training and can be bulletproof."

"Will I be allowed to work with you considering I have a close connection to the case?" asked Pete.

"I think I can argue around the conflict of interest with the whole bulletproof and Russian translation thing."

"What does understanding Russian have to do with this?"

"Maybe nothing," Marie said. "Maybe the people behind it are the bratva."

Forehead furrowing, Pete closed his eyes and let out a sigh. "Those people. Thanks to them, anyone Russian must be a nuke-wielding commie or a gangster. So you need me to infiltrate a gang?"

"No, nothing that intense. Leave the infiltrating to me." _Ha._ thought Marie. "I'm undercover as a hooker. I think someone in charge of a mutant-fetish prostitution ring is killing their workers off."

"And you think Illyana's disappearance is related to this... ring?" Pete looked like he might throw up.

"God, I hope not. But I can't ignore the fact that her doll was found with a body related to the case. The op's pretty delicate-- all the stupid mutant-human politics, the gang aspect, the fact that I actually work the same beat as the op. It needs to stay on the way down low. I can't have just anyone acting as go-between with this one."

"You need someone you can trust," said Pete.

Marie smirked and dug her hands deeper in her pockets. "Once a Goonie, always a Goonie. I can completely understand if you can't do it. You're my first choice, though, and I wanted to let you know."

Pete walked to the next exhibit piece, another ceremonial mask, this time made of hand-held electronics. "How much time do I have to think about it?"

"Three days max."

"Then I will let you know by tomorrow." He ran a finger across the surface of the pillar that held the ceremonial mask, then rubbed the dust into his thumb. "I remember your first day of class. Storm's History 1 in the arboretum. I'd been at the school for three years then and seen a lot of other kids come through and graduated wanting nothing but to pass as human. To live a regular life and forget they were ever one of us. I remember thinking you'd probably be a lot like them."

"I guess I proved you right," said Marie. She touched the spot on her deltoid where she'd taken that first batch of Novomane, the drug Worthington Avent-Smythe marketed as The Cure for mutations. Although the effect had been temporary, the long-term side effects for her had been psychological addiction, alienation, a funky immune system, and unpredictable powers. She was so far from regular, she couldn't even spell it.

Pete shook his head, smiling as he confirmed her thoughts. "Oh no. You're anything but regular, Marie D'Ancanto. Because of that, I'm so proud to be your friend."

* * *

While clichéd, Marie supposed a place like Jersey City wouldn't bat an eye at S&M seduction training. For the umpteenth time since boarding the subway, she almost changed her tune. She couldn't believe she was actually going to do this. Hell, she couldn't believe this was her idea to begin with. Charlotte was right; she _was_ digging an idiocy basement. She only hoped the sacrifice of her dignity wouldn't be for nothing.

The address Lebeau sent led to a narrow house, typical early twentieth century style with just enough space between the buildings on either side to keep the neighbours from reaching through the windows to borrow dish soap. Like most of the houses on the street, it was split into two residences. Marie wondered what the other tenant would think of this. She climbed the ten steps up to the front door and rang the bell.

Lebeau answered the door immediately and ushered her in. "Catch."

She caught a pair of handcuffs. The cuffs seemed to be chain-link, padded thickly and covered in purple suede. "Thanks. I think."

"Y'welcome. You sure you want to do this?"

"I'm sure I want to close this case successfully," said Marie. "This is just something that has to be done. Are you sure you _know_ how to do this?"

"What I don't know I'm sure you're smart enough to make up along the way." He paused on the way up to the second floor, presumably where the bedrooms were. "You ain't a virgin, are you?"

"No," said Marie. She wished she didn't have to blush about it though.

"Right. Okay, that'll make things-- what exactly is your experience? Gotta know where in the lesson plan to start."

"You have an S&M lesson plan. Like you've done this before. I must be freaking crazy."

"Hey, this ain't exactly how I imagined getting you to give me a lap dance but you were the one going on and on about bringing the sexy back for great justice." He opened the second of three doors in the second floor. "Bathroom. Other two are bedrooms. Mine's the last door."

Marie paused. "I... get my own room."

"Of course you do," Lebeau snapped. "You asked me-- threatened me-- to do this. So I'm doing this like training which means you get your own damn room. You ain't turning me into the villain of your own personal tragedy. I get enough of that from Belle."

"Excuse me for jumping to conclusions. Just because ninety percent of our conversations so far involve you hitting on me in the perviest way possible, it sure doesn't mean you'd take advantage of the situation," Marie retorted.

"Well, I won't. Like I said before, I ain't so hard up for a fuck that I'd force someone unwilling."

His vehemence surprised Marie. Lebeau was genuinely offended and angry. Honestly, she hadn't thought him capable of those feelings.

"All right. I'm... I guess I'm sorry," she said.

He crossed his arms. "You guess?"

"I'll truly be sorry if you promise to cut back on the freaking awful pick-up lines."

"They make you laugh."

"They do not!"

"Sure they do. Here." He flicked his thumb at the corner of her left eye. 

The touch left Marie surprised; she didn't have time to hold minimize her powers. Exasperation-attraction-irritation-fondness zapped through her skin. She took a step back.

"You always do that?" asked Lebeau.

"What?"

"Pull away when someone gets in your space."

"Purple Ring of Personal Space. Learned it in kindergarten, served me well since."

"Not as a hooker, it won't. You're a cop; you know about using personal space as a threat."

"Except in my case, my personal space _is_ my weapon," said Marie.

"Keep thinking of it that way. You're the mistress. The boss. Whoever's in front of you ain't worth the shit you scrape off your boots." He stepped in closer. If they both took deep breaths, their chests would touch. He stared down at her. "Look at me. Forget sex. Get into cop mode."

"Kind of hard to forget sex when that's the point," she said.

"Not here. Not with this. The point of this is power. To be on top. You gotta know you're the boss through and through." He stepped closer still. Her breasts brushed his chest. He refused to break eye contact. The heat of his breaths fluttered against her bangs. Marie felt heat everywhere else but she couldn't tell if it he emanated warmth or if she had a full body blush.

Then Lebeau smirked.

So quickly it had to be a reflex, Marie grabbed Lebeau's thumb and bent it backwards. As he twisted out of the hold, she turned with him, hooking an ankle around his closest leg and kicking up. He recovered by allowing himself to fall back then transforming the fall into a handspring. Marie jabbed her elbow into his stomach. Lebeau's handspring collapsed. She held her foot at his throat.

"So," she said. "Now I'm on top."

He grinned up at her. "You sure are, _sha_." He lifted her foot off his neck to press a kiss on the top of her shoe. 

Marie pulled away. "Say please."

"And you said you needed training to do this."

"What can I say? I'm inspired by the notion of kicking your ass."

"Careful, _sha_. I think in this scene, that means 'I love you.'"

"I could never say those words to someone who inserts outdated Justin Timberlake lyrics into normal conversation."

"That song ain't outdated; it's a classic."

"You're old."

"You're mean."

"I'm trying to be a dominatrix, remember? Or should I get you some more Geritol so you remember the conversation we had five minutes ago?"

"See? Mean. Downright bitchy. How you supposed to convince little kids to ask for your help when you scare 'em away with that attitude?"

"I'm nice to little kids. Immature senior citizens, less so."

"I'm only forty-ni--" Lebeau threw his hands up, shrugging with a Gallic air that should've been watered down by now considering how far removed Cajuns were from their French roots. "Look, you want to know how to use a flogger or not?"

"I'm kinda liking pissing you off for once," said Marie.

" _Sha,_ you ain't done nothing but since I first started watching you shower from the apartment across the street."

"Oh my _gawd!_ "

Lebeau went purple. He flailed. "Joking. Foot. Air!"

Marie stepped off his throat. Arms crossed, glaring, and just about ready to stuff that flogger up where the sun don't shine then pull it out of his pie hole, she waited for him to recover. This was going to be a long damn day.


	5. Chapter 5

Another wet November night, another eight to ten hours walking the street in ridiculously high boots and a faux fur jacket. Marie forced her hands down from around her collar. There was simply no way to look sexy while shivering and her sorry excuse of a jacket didn't help anything. It didn't even cover her stomach. 

The only people on the street that weren't trembling hard enough to shatter their teeth were the ones tripping out on heroin or meth. They were cold, too; they were just blue around the lips and fingers because their bodies didn't know enough to shiver. Marie felt sick doing so but she had to ignore them. Except maybe for the mass of rags in the middle of the alley just behind her. That person hadn't done much but twitch in the past fifteen minutes. He or she-- hard to tell under all the clothes-- had shot something up an hour ago. The minute he or she stopped twitching, she was going for help.

From across the street, Skids waved her down. Marie returned the wave. Skids must have thought of that as an invitation because she ran across four lanes of traffic to get to her.

"Use the crosswalk, crackwhore!" yelled an irate driver.

Skids flipped him a double finger. "Fuck you, asshole!"

"Not if _you_ paid _me_!"

"With your face, you'd have to buy pussy!"

The lights went green before the fight could escalate. Marie handed Skids a cigarette which she accepted with glee. "You're always so good at making friends, sugar."

"I fucking hate people sometime, y'know? That's the kind of asshole who wouldn't think going to a titty bar is a big deal just because you sit down on some pretty chairs and the whores serve you fruity drinks in dim lighting. A whore's a whore like a john's a john; whether you buy one on the street or in a fucking 'gentleman's club' or whatever, you're still paying for pussy. They should just nut up and admit that."

"I'd love to be doing this inside a bar, chairs or no chairs," said Marie. "Like that party in the near the Financial District. That was awesome, huh? Too bad the fucking pigs busted it up."

"Cops ain't so bad. They're some of my best customers." Skids laughed and Marie joined her.

"Figures. They know where to get the best goods."

"A-fucking-men."

"I heard they have a whole, like, fucking house with parties like that all the time.

"Yeah, people talk a lot about them."

"Worth checking out."

Skids sent her a look from the side of he eyes. "You're new around here so maybe you haven't heard. Most places like that are run by flatscans. Probably a way to get rid of us all."

"The fuck it is."

"I'm telling the fucking truth, okay? Who else would? It's not like your average genejoe can afford a place to themselves. We ain't allowed to get decent work, the banks don't fucking trust us-- it just don't work. Then you got a bunch of people holed up outside of Mutant Town saying it's a fucking party? Fuck that."

"There's that mutant mayor in Boston."

"His daddy made Novomane. Fuck him." Skids spat out a thick, brown plug of phlegm. "I'm telling you, girl, Magneto was fucking right. They're trying to get rid of us. Only it ain't fucking-- what do you call it-- politically correct to just shoot us on sight any more so they're doing it in secret. If Magneto was still alive, I'd sign up with him no questions asked."

If Marie was more like Storm, she'd've hugged it out with Skids and maybe dropped an Xavier's number. She might still give that number, if she could do it discretely enough. But the cop in her-- in _her_ not in Logan or Lebeau or even Magneto-- stayed in character. She was on a job. "I don't give a shit about all of that. I just want my jib or my zif and someplace warm to sleep it off. This winter is fucking brutal." She blew on her hands to make a point. "My nips could cut glass, I'm not fucking kidding."

That snapped Skids out of her morosity." The shelter on Avenue A's open. Wanna go?"

"Girl, I got nothing on me tonight."

"It's a shelter, you fucking twat. It's free." After a tick, she added, "Blitzen goes there a lot. She might know the guys with the house. Or at least she used to go there a lot. I ain't seen her in days. You?"

Marie shook her head.

"Blitz can get blitzed, if you know what I mean." Skids tapped her forehead. "Chick'll give it away for free when she's in a good place. That's why I came to see you, to ask if you'd seen her."

"Not since the party."

Skids spat on the sidewalk. "What did I tell you about those fucking flatscan parties?"

Marie refocussed the conversation. "Where's this shelter you were talking about?"

"Ain't it too early to call it in?"

"Sugar, it's so cold, no one's going to pick up in the next hour. I'd rather be warm."

The shelter Skids had been talking about was run by Mennonites out of a converted warehouse. With its proximity to Mutant Town, the developers had yet to jump into the otherwise prime real estate. Marie hoped they'd stay away as long as possible. Tensions being what they were, the eviction of mutants from Alphabet City could result in some pretty ugly riots. Mutant Town might be a ghetto but it was _their_ ghetto. Having their home razed to make room for rich, usually baseline humans would cut a pretty deep insult. In Marie's opinion, the only thing worse that tearing everything down was if developers only demolished and renovated the backs of the buildings to market the neighbourhood as "artsy" or "edgy."

The shelter allowed both men and women to have dinner but once ten o'clock struck, the men were kicked out and the beds saved for women. It caused a lot of grumbling but the people in charge stuck by their mandate to provide a safe place for women to sleep without the fear of sexual assault. Marie hadn't even thought of that until she used a few shelters herself. She couldn't believe how many women were solicited for sex, harassed, or even blatantly groped even with monitors. Really, this op was making her bitter against men which was really a shame.

With fifteen minutes left for the dinner service, Marie and Skids managed to grab the last few plates. They didn't see Blitzen but Pinhead, the small-time pimp, dealer, and all around neighbourhood skeezeball, was there, chomping on a buttered dinner roll.

"Hey girls! Looking good. Didja get any of the pie? Fu--freaking amazing pie."

The people in charge didn't like swearing. They'd been known to kick people out for swearing too much.

"It's all right," said Marie. "Hey, you seen Blitzen around? We haven't since the party."

"Party?"

"The one where Pinhead dropped us off? Lots of guys in Eurotrash outfits, drinking warm beer," said Skids. "Cops messed it up."

"Ooooh, that party. Sorry, I get invited to so many." He grinned and paused, obviously waiting to be asked. When they didn't he pouted a bit. "Haven't seen her either. Was busy trying to dodge the blues myself, y'know?"

"Where could she have gone?" Marie asked. "Does she have a usual place?"

"Naw, Blitz is a free spirit, man. She goes wherever, she does whatever."

Translation: Blitz smoked too much of her earnings to have a permanent place to rent so she slept wherever she landed after a trip.

"I'm thinking she went with one of the guys from the party," Pinhead continued. "One of them was pretty territorial about her, y'know?"

"Damn. Hope she doesn't get lost in the Outer Boroughs. I heard they put you in jail for weeks there for just hanging out," said Skids.

 _But at least in jail, she'd have a roof over her head, three square meals, and a chance to sober up_ Marie thought. Instead of saying that, she asked, "So, you think those guys'll have another party soon?"

Skids frowned and backhanded her across the shoulder. Marie shrugged it off, waiting for a response.

"Not just another party." Pinhead curled his finger, gesturing them to come closed, then leaned forward and said, in a stage-whisper, "I hear they're looking for some permanent workers from our folk."

"Yeah?"

Skids hit her again. "We're not interested."

Marie hit her back. "What're they asking?"

"Just genejoes. Or rather, genejills. Well, maybe a couple genejoes if they're pretty enough is what I hear. You get your own room, food included, and the customers come to you." Pinhead slapped the table. "Come to you. Get it?" He guffawed at his own pun.

"Where is it? Do you think they'd take me?"

Skids finally snapped. She shot out of her seat, the force sending the collapsible chair skidding towards the neighbouring table. "Bitch!" she screamed. "Fucking bitch! Fucking stupid cunt! I told you about that place!"

Marie pulled at her sleeve, desperately trying to quiet her down before the shelter workers kicked them out.

"I told you they're fucking killing us and you still want to go? And you!" Skids turned her wrath on Pinhead. "You're fucking selling your own people out to the flatties."

Pinhead glanced nervously from side to side, trying to assuage the audience's judgment. "Ain't like that, Skids. It's a steady job is all. It's a community service is all."

"Fuck you, traitor!"

"Skids! Stop it." Marie yanked. Skids tripped but jumped back on her feet as soon as Marie loosened her hold. "I want to do this."

"Then you're stupid. You're a stupid fucking cunt. I don't associate with stupid fucking cunts."

The shelter workers were upon them now. "Five minutes to settle it outside, ladies, or you don't get back in for the beds."

Skids bared her teeth. She pulled her bag up on her shoulder. "I'd rather sleep outside than spend any more time with dumb and dumber."

"No, I'm the one who wants to go with Pinhead. I'll go."

"Fuck if I care."

Marie almost said something. Something stupid like "thank you truly for caring" or "you're a lot stronger than you think." Something that would break her cover. But she couldn't do that so instead, she flipped Skids the finger and stalked out of the shelter with Pinhead haplessly following. If his lead wasn't legit, Marie had just cut ties with someone desperately needing a friend. On the streets, friends were the difference between living and dying. She needed to wrap up this case fast.

* * *

Pinhead didn't know the exact address but some of his contacts did. Half a dozen of them actually, each spouting a different address. Word of mouth was perhaps the best and worst part of being undercover. Marie called the different addresses in but MacTac didn't get back to her with information until the next day. By then, she had another two addresses. Baglady Sue made a trip into a seedy internet cafe to do her own research.

In the end, MacTac narrowed it down to three most likely addresses out of eight. Marie had a feeling about the artistically distressed brownstone in Midwood but Charlotte had a point about casing them all out first. Stake-outs were hellishly boring but it gave Marie an excuse to bathe-- really truly bathe with hot water, a loofah, and conditioner in her hair-- and sit on something with padding, drinking hot coffee for a whole day. Heaven, even without heating.

With Henshaw looking too middle-class-white-priveledge and Charlotte Jones as acting captain, Marie and Everett Thomas partnered up to stake out the Midwood place. Fortunately, their working relationship had graduated from outright hostility to civil nods. And Charlotte thought Marie needed to work on her personal growth.

Thomas ducked back into the hotel room, holding a paper bag of deliciousness upright. "Lunch. And coffee."

Eyes glued to the house across the street, Marie held her hand out for her share. In New York City, handheld foodstuffs were kings and very few handheld foodstuffs were as good as sushi cones, in her humble opinion. Five years ago, she wouldn't have near anything more dangerous than a California roll but her neighbour with the labradoodle introduced her to the real stuff. Too bad they weren't going out any more. _Especially, with the new tricks from Lebeau's training session,_ said a voice in her head that actually sounded a lot like Lebeau. Marie quashed the thought. The man was like a candypop song, stuck in your head whether you liked him or not.

Thomas cleared his throat.

Marie mentally groaned. No. Not now. For the love of God, she didn't need Thomas turning this into a chance to tease her about her cover. Or worse, try to be friends. 

"So, it's gotta be tough living on the streets right now."

Crap. Friendliness. Marie grunted, stuffed her face with another sushi cone. Hopefully, he'd get the message.

"When I ran away, it was spring time in California. Not exactly a hardship." He tried for a smile. "Y'know, I was thinking about doing an annual neighbourhood outreach program--"

She held up a hand. "Is it directly relevant to this case? No? Don't give a shit right now."

"Damn, D'Ancanto, you can be a cold bitch."

"Aww shucks, thanks, sugar."

"Look, if you're still angry about my attitude last year, I'm sorry already, okay? I was a shithead. Did you need to hear that?"

"Yes. But still not caring very much right now. Maybe one day, during a Christmas party or something, we'll have too many beers and hug it out. For now, the landscape is the case."

She felt Thomas' stare drilling holes through her head. Metaphorically, not literally in his case. And damn, days like this, she missed Scott Summers. She wished she'd touched him even for a second so she could tap into his calm logic when she had her rage-bitch on.

"Fine." Thomas sighed. "So, are you getting anywhere?"

"Actually, I think so." Keeping one eye on the camera viewfinder, Marie tapped a picture from one of the many dated folder on their laptop. She scrolled through half the images before bringing one up to full size. "Second guy on the right with the cigarette in his hand. He looks like he's coming out the back or side door to the building. I'm pretty sure he was at the party that got busted up last week."

"What was he doing?"

"Watching."

Thomas whistled. "One of those creepers."

"It wasn't even that. He wasn't getting off on it; at least not that I could tell. He was... shopping."

"Come again? Looking to see who he should get for the night you mean?"

"Kind of. Shopping like you're looking for a car or scouting for a football team," said Marie. "Like it was serious business. The sex going on was just someone else taking his possible purchase out for a test drive."

"That's even more creepy than getting off on watching."

"Yeah, I thought so, too.

The thing about stake-outs, Marie discovered soon after graduating from the academy six years ago, was the sheer, mind-blowing boredom of it all. It was the type of boredom that led to mistakes even with the invention of the video camera which was why it wasn't until Marie reviewed the morning's clips that she came across the mysterious man at the party again. That was the second sighting at this particular address. He was hanging around the side-entrance again, loose-limbed as he smoked. In fact, Marie had never seen anyone use the building's front door. That was weird.

She shared her suspicion with Thomas. "Sounds like a good reason to ask for the audio surveillance equipment," he said.

"Please, oh, please let us play with the tech toys. We promise not to hurt them."

Thomas grinned. "If we're lucky, it'll come with batteries."

"Such miracles aren't for people like us," said Marie.

"How much memory do you think we'll need before they give you the okay to approach?"

"We just need one good conversation. Judge Walter's on our side; she'll sign the warrant." Marie crossed her fingers as she spoke. Judge Jennifer Walters was mutant-friendly, true, but even she had to toe to fine line in terms of all the political webbing surrounding MacTac. This was the mayor's final year and next year's incumbents had been strangely quiet about the future of MacTac. While that might be an indication of the unit turning into "just another one of the guys," Marie preferred to be pragmatic about it all. She was a cog in the wheel. And right now, this cog needed to nail an asshole to the wall.

* * *

Liz' body shifted appropriately, wearing cheapest Dom gear a streetwalker could afford as well as Lebeau's purple handcuffs. Looking appropriately desperate, Marie knocked on the side-door of the brownstone. She danced in place, rubbing her arms, waiting for an answer. If she was wrong or if they didn't let her in, it was the end of her murder case. Sure, MacTac or Vice would close the place down but that still left the murderers on the loose and this time with an inkling that the cops were onto them. She had no intention of letting them get away with killing any more people.

"Who is it?" someone asked from behind the door.

"Um, I'm Liz? Pinhead sent me."

"Pinhead?"

"Blue skin. Looks kind of like a monster from those eighties horror movies." She smiled for the peephole.

No sounds came from behind the door. The place must have had great sound insulation, much better than standard for a building this old. Even more evidence that this was the right house. The door opened and Marie jumped inside.

"Thanks. Cold as shit out there."

The bouncer looked like boulders glued together and magicked to life. Behind him stood the man she'd recognized from the stake out, the bland guy from the party. Well-groomed just like before, in slacks and a polo shirt, he'd fit right into the college crowd in Yale with brown hair in a business cut, and stubble-shadowed jaw. He rolled a cigarillo between his hands, his nails neatly cut but not professionally manicured.

"Pinhead sent you?" he asked.

Marie nodded.

He dismissed the bouncer who took his place on a stool by the door once again. Slowly, he walked a circle around Marie. She felt like a car on the showroom floor.

"He does know our clientele. What can you do?"

Marie shrugged. "This is it. Oh, my spikes kind of hurt."

"Other people?"

"Yeah. It gives them a zap. Like, um, those fugu sushi things."

He dipped his chin, watching her from under heavy eyebrows. "Where did you learn about fugu?"

"One of my customers told me. Hey, I know how to google things."

"And you have these spines all over your body?"

"Yeah."

He circled her again. "If your spines could hurt our clients, why _should_ we hire you? You could scare them away."

Marie cocked her hip to one side. "Honey, I am an expert at making it hurt so good. Try it for yourself; it's on the house this time."

"No, thank you."

Leaning forward, Marie reached out to drag her clawed finger down from his collar to his navel. "Aww, are you scared, honeybuns? Miz Liz likes her boys nice and sca--oww!"

He had taken her finger and bent it backwards. Any bit more pressure and he'd pop it out of joint. Marie knew how to get out of that hold but Liz wouldn't. She sank to her knees.

"No, thank you," repeated the man. He released her and then wiped his hand on his pants.

"Sorry," she said. She let her voice go into a bit of a whine. "It's just my thing, y'know? I'm just doing my thing. I promise I'll only do it for the johns from now on. And they'll like it! They like shit like that, y'know."

"Perhaps." He signalled to the boulder bouncer who whipped out his phone to send a text. "We'll try your game for two nights. If you make us enough money, I'll consider letting you stay."

"Thank you! You'll make a shitload, I promise."

Another bouncer, this one looking half-hippo, clomped down the stairs. "You called, boss?"

"Bring her up to Stefan," said the man who'd interviewed her. Marie realised she didn't have his name. "Tell him we might have someone for Room 6."

* * *

If crooks played good cop/bad cop, Stefan played good cop to a tee. He greeted Marie with a toothpaste commercial smile, hugging her with one hand, and offering a glass of wine with the other. She took it just to have something to hold.

"Pinhead's taste is amazing. Just last week, he brought Blitzen in. You remember her?"

Marie nodded.

"She's loving it here. Thinks it's great. You'll like it, too, baby." Wrapping his arm around her waist, he snapped his fingers at the hippo-bouncer. "Get rid of the bag. Don't worry about it. We're gonna give you everything you need."

"But my stuff's in there. My toys and... and my clothes and shit."

"What you think we don't got toys and clothes?" Stefan threw his head back and laughed. "Baby, we got stuff you ain't even tried yet. Let me give you the tour of The Genie."

"That what this place is called? I don't gotta wear belly-dancer shit all the time, do I?"

"No, no, that's just what we call the club. Genie, genes, mutant genes."

"Genejoes and genejills."

"Exactly."

Following Stefan, Marie took in the layout, all possible exists, and made note of useful impromptu weapons. Heavy drapes covered every wall, hiding all the windows. Two hallways led out of the main room: one ending in a restroom door, and a longer one led up a darkened, narrow staircase. Where the front entrance should have been was an elaborate bar.

"As you can see, there's not much of a kitchen," said Stefan. "You girls don't have to worry about that. We order out every night. The bar's more the thing." He pulled out a bottle from the top shelf. "Twenty year old single malt. Ever tried one?"

Marie shook her head. She hadn't but Logan had.

"I'll have to introduce you. We wanted a real open concept with the main floor. Kind of like a VIP lounge, small but decked out." Three cylindrical stages rose up from the floor in various heights with dancing poles embedded in their centres. Sequined cloth draped and rusched on the ceiling from the poles outward so the room resembled a tent. Coloured lights hung between the folds. Some of the cloth dropped down from the walls to create see-through screens between the couches and chairs in the periphery of the room. The tiny side tables were barely visible; this place wasn't for eating.

Stefan pulled her by the arm, gently but possessively, up the stairs. "Your room will be up here on the second floor. You'll get your own. Doesn't that sound nice?"

"I ain't ever had my own room," said Marie. They'd passed two doors on either side so far and she counted another six down the hall. The house wasn't that big. The rooms had to be the size of closets.

"It's small but it's all yours. We even dressed it up a bit for your particular talents. If you get good, you can move up to the third floor. Bigger rooms there." He opened the fourth door on the left. 

Marie peered in. A large mirror covered one wall. Another, slimmer one was nailed to the ceiling above the bed. Classy. The bed itself was a full-sized mattress and boxspring directly on the floor. Two black-satin pillows lay on top of a black-satin sheet folded over what had to be more black satin. How the hell she was supposed to use that bed without sliding off was beyond her. The wall closest to the door held tools of Liz's trade-- riding crops, elastic whips, a couple thin canes, an impressive collection of handcuffs, gimp masks, ball gags, blindfolds, rubber paddles, even a wooden ruler. 

"Jesus H Fucking Christ," she breathed.

"I take it you approve?" Stefan slid in closer. His hands spanned her waist and he rested his chin on her shoulder. "I would love to try some this out on you."

"The deal is I try it out on _you_ ," said Marie.

Suddenly, his grip tightened, squeezing her torso hard enough to make breathing difficult.

"Of-- of course, I'm willing to change the rules some for the man of the house," Marie said.

"Good. If the customers are willing to pay for a spanking instead of a fuck, that's their business. But me, I want this." He cupped her groin roughly enough for her to feel his fingernails. "I own this." His other hand squeezed her breast through her corset.

"F-fine. That's fine, Stefan." Marie hoped to God he was the kind who finished in under three minutes or else he was going to have the shittiest afterglow. On the other hand, absorbing his memories would make this case go a lot faster, warrant or no warrant.

"Good. Now strip and get on that--" Stefan's phone rang. " _Blyad,_ not fucking now."

Marie started to strip anyway but he stopped her.

"I need to handle this but you start working tonight, got it? We'll have some customers in a couple hours. Get something to eat from the fridge. You'll need the energy." He stalked out the door, still muttering to his phone in Russian.

Marie fell back on the bed. Holy bipolar pimps, Batman! That had been close. She took her collar off and pushed out one of the spikes. The base unscrewed to reveal a transmitter. Seeing as how she was going to do most of her work close to the mirrors, she pressed the transmitter behind the mirror closest to the bed, leaving seven more transmitters to spread out. She definitely needed to put one near the bar and at least two in that skank's paradise they called a parlour. There had to be other rooms in this place for dirtier deeds than sex. If she drew on every lesson Lebeau crammed into her for three days, she might get Stefan to crack a bit.

 _No,_ she told herself, _There's no_ might _about it. You_ are _going to make him crack._

* * *

She should have eaten a full meal before going undercover again. Switching between powers always made her hungry and she'd been going pretty hard at the surveillance using Logan's hyperkeen senses. The problem being, she switched back to Sauron's form with every footfall near her door. She felt like she'd just run ten miles. She could eat a roasted horse whole right about now.

Her room didn't have a clock and with Liz's phone dumped with the rest of her bags, Marie had no idea how much time had passed between knocking on the door and Stefan's exit. Her stomach told her it had to be at least three in the afternoon. She tried her door. To her surprise, it wasn't locked. When Stefan led her in, she'd noted the bar lock on the outside of the door. So, the doors locked from inside for the johns' privacy but the girls could also be locked in by anyone from the outside. A shiver went down Marie's back.

Break time over. Back undercover. She slid back into Liz's shape, wincing a bit at an overall soreness. Yet another reason to get this case wrapped up as neatly as possible. Marie stepped lightly down the hall. She couldn't hear anything from the other rooms. The interior walls were probably sound-proofed, too. This place wasn't just a stable, it was a long-term investment. How many years had it been around to gobble up mutants with nowhere else to turn? Worse, how many other murders had been committed before MacTac was around to give a damn?

She made it down the stairs and to the kitchen where have a dozen girls were hanging out. Eight more sat in the dance floor/lounge, already eating. By the smell, the night's fare was breakfast and marijuana. Marie's stomach yowled for stick-to-the-ribs omelettes. Her sinuses stung at the scent of pot. The other women gave her a cursory glance before deciding food and drugs were infinitely more interesting than the new girl on the block. Best not to shove herself in the herd. Groups always had a pecking order and new guys were always at the bottom of it. In a day or two, someone would approach her either to make friends or try to put her in her place.

"So, how's this work?" she asked the room in general. "I gotta put money in a jar or something?"

The closest woman jerked her chin at the bar. "Eat before it disappears."

"Okay." Marie had to admit that for a brothel, they had decent food. Even if wasn't haut cuisine, it was at least plentiful. Standing in attention at the far end of the bar were half a dozen boxes of cereal ranging from sugary kid fare to bran flakes. The rest of the bar was covered in at least two loaves' worth of toasted bread, two cartons of juice, a plastic gallon jug of milk, a bowl of scrambled eggs, and an industrial sized coffee maker. There was always a bunch of fruit; they were part of the entertainment.

The top tier prostitutes had plates and seats at the bar. They obviously had first pick of the food and the option to come back for seconds. They also claimed all the bacon served and all the bongs. The remaining sex workers spread around the main floor in an apparent approximation of the hierarchy. The farther away from the food and drugs, the lower on the ladder. According to the way the others closed ranks around the food on her approach, the only person lower on the totem pole than Marie was Blitzen. 

If Blitzen had a longer tail, it would have been tucked between her legs. She approached the breakfast bar slowly, making way for the others first before daring to snatch a slice of toast from a heaping platter and a bunch of grapes hanging over the edge of a bowl. As she turned to leave, one of the male workers shoved her aside to get to the bar. Blitzen fell on her butt. One of her toasted slices dropped to the floor. Another girl stomped on it before Blitzen could retrieve it. Cowed, she scrabbled to a corner with her remaining loot before she lost any more.

Fine. If that how they were going to be. Marie squared her shoulders for her turn at breakfast. The others pulled tighter around the food. That was all right; Marie had already picked out the weakest brick in that wall, a leafy-haired waif that looked like Tinkerbell's sluttier cousin. Marie grabbed Leafgirl's shirt and pulled her away. She tripped back, squawking. Pretty funny for a tree-person. Before anyone could recover from the shock, Marie grabbed a box of cereal, an orange, and the milk jug.

"I _will_ hit you with this," she said, hefting the jug over her head when the nearest people surged forward to take it from her.

"You can't take us all, bitch," said the guy who'd shoved Blitzen.

"Maybe not, but I'd fucking _love_ beating as many of you as possible before I go down. Starting with you two." She pointed at him and Leafgirl.

They had the numbers but she had Logan's aura of badassery to augment her own. The second floor prostitutes backed away, muttering, looking to a blue-haired, pink-scaled woman for support. She sat at the head of the bar, closest to the coffee machine. Marie mentally labelled her Big Kahuna. Big Kahuna pushed her seat away from the bar to cross her arms.

"You've got some balls, bitch."

"Not that kind of mutie," said Marie. "Me and Blitz just want to eat."

The leaf-haired girl all but spat in her direction. "It ain't right is all, Stacey. She's in Zeb's room." She pointed at Blitzen.

Big Kahuna's name was Stacey? What a letdown.

One of the other girls smacked her on the arm. "Shut up. Y'know they don't like us talking about Zeb."

"Who's Zeb?" Marie dared to ask.

"Shut up."

Stacey ignored the side conversation. She stood, looming over Marie. Marie wasn't petite by any means so Stacey must have been at least five foot ten in those heeled slippers. "Know your place, bitch."

"Fuck off. We're all in the same place: on our fucking backs, sucking off closested mutaphiles so we can smoke the rest of the day away. Don't pretend you're any better just 'cause you kneel on designer carpets when you suck dick. A cunt is a cunt is a cunt."

Marie's head snapped to the right. She felt the slap half a second after the heard it. The warmth spread from her cheek down to her neck and up around her eye. So Stacey X was also pretty strong. Good to know. Marie licked her lip, tasting the penny-like flavour of her own blood. None of her teeth felt loose; she must have just split her lip.

"That was on me. Next time, I hit back," She turned her back on Stacey and started the countdown. _Five, four, three..._

Marie crouched as soon as she heard Stacey's roar. She left the food on the floor. Her left leg swung around and back, catching Stacey's ankle. As the other woman flailed her arms to regain her balance, Marie shot back up to her feet, grabbed Stacey's arm and twisted her body around so Stacey flew over her back in a perfect front flip. Marie rescued the milk jug before Stacey could fall on it. The cereal was a lost cause though. She took it away way, with the oranges, and sauntered to Blitzen's corner. So much for blending in.


	6. Chapter 6

Pete didn't show up until her fourth night at the Genie. 

"What took you so long?" Marie demanded as she stripped him of his shirt.

"It wasn't as easy as you think to get an appointment with you. You're pretty popular." Pete's cheeks and the tips of his ears were cherry red. He looked everywhere but at her. Not that the rest of the room held safer views but she thought the impressive amount of friendzone boobies probably contributed to his discomfort.

"Popular, huh?"

"Yeah. There's, um, a list that, um, goes about the whole page of, um... um... Marie, can you please stop looking..." He gestured vaguely in the direction of her top.

"Think of it as a uniform. Like the ones our friends wear for their _ex_ tracurricular activities."

Pete closed his eyes briefly. "Marie, you're my friend, but that's not going to help. I'm sorry. I don't think I'm very good at this."

"You're from out of town, you've had extracurricular training, and you understand Russian," said Marie. "You're perfect. I'll cover up but we'll have to make some convincing noises. Can you go metallic so I can pretend to sexy beat you up?"

"Marie--"

"Mistress Liz," she corrected.

Pete's entire face was now tomato red. "I am _not_ calling you Mistress Liz," he bit out. "There has to be another way to do this without you demeaning yourself."

"Then call me ma'am. Now go metal and let me hit you already."

Raising his gaze to the sky and sighing, he transformed. Marie slapped the flogger lightly over his back, using the sound to muffle their conversation. 

"Did you find any other rooms downstairs?"

"I was stuck on the east wall. Nothing behind those curtains. I'll try out another wall next time. Do you have anything for me to do?"

"Look up Max and Stefan," Marie said. "They're high up enough to run a place like this instead of being street pimps but someone higher up on wouldn't have to touch the business side of things. They'd just reap the benefits. Stefan definitely has to go places for someone, sometimes in a hurry. Hopefully, they're in the system."

"Maybe they're just prompt businessmen," said Pete. "Prompt immoral businessmen."

"Your naiveté is adorable. No, they act kind of like the executive board of a corporation. Confident but not quite head cheese."

"Do you think the, um, head cheese knows about this place?"

Marie bit her lip. "I can't tell yet. It's too early. At least three people in this place aren't here consensually. They're pumped so full of drugs, they probably don't know up from down."

Pete shuddered. "We need to help them, too."

"Damn straight we will. Yelp."

"What?"

"Yelp. Like I hit you really hard and you liked it."

The flush returned to Pete's face. "Can we just pretend I'm gagged?"

"Oooh, good idea, you kinky bastard." She pulled the purple handcuffs off their hook. "Drool on that a bit."

Pete held it between the tips of his thumb and forefinger. "Please tell me you disinfect these. One of the men downstairs has an open cold sore and I'm not interested in catching herpes."

"Just spit on it or something."

Pete screwed his face around but produced an acceptable loogie. Marie smacked it against the mirror a few times for effect.

"What's that?" Pete asked.

"What's what?"

Frowning, he pointed to her torso where a sliver of skin showed between her pants and her corset. "That. That bruise."

"Oh. That." She smoothed the corset down on top of it. "Work hazard."

"Did one of these... men hit you?" Pete growled.

"Men come to Mistress Liz to get hit, not the other way around."

"Then who--"

"Nothing for you to worry about."

"No, you don't get to say that to me. Not when you're doing this to help my sister."

Marie put her hands on her hips. "Are you going to be able to stay objective? I won't be able to do shit for your sister unless I keep this cover."

"I... you..." Pete closed his eyes and took three deep breaths. "I can be objective. I just... need to know if you're hurt. As your partner. Is this injury going to be a liability?"

"No," she said flatly. She ran her hands down her corset again. "All pimps need to exert their power over their 'property.' Stefan didn't like how my spikes stung him so he decided to pay me back in turn despite the fact that I warned him."

"He punched you?"

"Kicked. Good thing though. He kicks like a girl."

Pete closed his eyes again. This time, he took five breaths.

"I can take the hits, Pete. Illyana can't."

"I know. I understand. I just... Couldn't you heal yourself with Logan's powers?" 

"Seeing the bruise makes him feel like he has a big dick again. Means he won't try to teach Mistress Liz another lesson."

"Marie." He touched her hip. "This is worse than when you worked in the basement at the Masion. At least with us, you were allowed to dodge hits."

"This is nothing," she repeated. "I can handle it. Besides, if your hand was any closer to my ass, I'd have to tell on you to Kitty."

"Brat." Pete shook his head, exasperated but shoved his fists into his pants pockets. He pulled them out again to throw miniature equipment on the bed. "Before I forget, I have a few things for you. Transmitter batteries. Mini maglight. Sleeping pills. They said you had someplace to put this camera?"

Marie plucked a riding crop from the wall and unscrewed the bottom off the handle. The cylindrical camera fit neatly in the hollow handle. "Step back, James Bond."

"You're enjoying this far too much for someone who doesn't want to return to the X-Men."

"I like my current dress code better." She made a face. "Obviously not _this_ dress code. But you know what I mean. You're one to talk. You're barely a member."

"I have a family to take care of. Who'll take care of them if I'm injured on a mission?"

"Xavier's takes care of its own, right?"

Pete nodded slowly. "They do. But there is something to be said for blood family, in the end."

"Maybe Rasputin blood. I'm sure most of the kids who passed through the school would've loved a transfusion of that to dilute the dickwipes who kicked them out. Case in point: me."

"Hey." He took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Marie managed a smile. "Take care of yourself. Mom would never forgive me if I let you get hurt."

* * *

Nine-thirty in the morning and not a creature was stirring. Marie picked the deadbolt to her room open. She glanced down either side of the hall. Still quiet. She reached out with Logan's hypersenses and picked up nothing but snores. The slow-acting tabs she'd dropped into the water dispenser had done the trick. She hated to do use drugs considering the wide variety of mutant reactions to sedatives. Hopefully no one had a severe anaphylactic allergy to Lunesta.

She padded down the stairs, passing the second floor with with more care. They didn't tend to let those girls out as often; they might not have had as much water, if they had any at all. Logan's powers heard nothing either so Marie continued down. On the main floor, she had to look out for the security. The shift changed every eight hours and they tended to hang watch TV between their bi-hourly rounds. Basher was the guard this morning. According to a conversation she'd overheard three nights ago, Basher was extremely susceptible to eszopiclone.

There he was, sprawled on the couch with ESPN on, the remote control still in his hand. His arm moved. Marie froze. His arm moved again, then his entire body, and Basher turned on the couch to cradle his head in his crooked elbow. A loud snore accompanied the television crowd's cheers.

Transferring her weight quickly and carefully from heel to toe, Marie made little noise crossing the lounge. She'd picked that one up from the X-Men, no thank you very much, Remy Lebeau. Reaching the bar, she pulled a small squeeze tube of cooking oil from her pocket and lubricated the hinges on the rightmost cupboard. Next, she took the lockpicks out from her bun. 

_Keyways. Plugs. Key pins and driver pins. Springs. Side wards. Scrubbing a lock is the easiest... force pins to line up to the sheer line... one-eighth pick and torque wrench... light torque at first then increase with... rake the rest... vary the torque..._

The lockpicking tools felt foreign in her hands but not her brain. Marie continued to let Lebeau's voice take over. _Insert the pick. Now the torque wrench. Feel for the dominant plug. Keep twisting, keep twisting._ A little more wriggling with the pick, a touch more torque and the lock released. The door opened silently on its greased hinges.

The cupboard was empty, as Marie expected. The decorative paper on the back wall matched the stuff on the bar shelves. A barely visible seam ran from down one corner but she couldn't see any way to open it. She ran her hands over the walls, pressing down every few inches. These always had some sort of catch in the movies but she didn't really expect--

Something clicked. The seamed side slid in by a fraction of a centimetre.

_For the love of G &T's, what is this, Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Brothel?_

The secrecy made no sense unless they were hiding something big so Marie slid the door open the rest of the way and stepped through, closing the cupboard behind her. Made the place dark as hell but it would give her some protection if anyone woke up early. Snapping her pocket maglight on, she shut the hidden seamed door as well and entered a small, simply furnished office: a fold-out table, two tall filing cabinets, a desk lamp. More incriminatory, a bill counting machine and deposit bags from several different business. Marie pulled her camera out of its hiding place in her riding crop and took pictures.

Now she needed to position the bug. The bareness of the place left few options. She checked under the table. Nothing to block the view except wads of gum and an empty spider egg hatch. The counting machine was too loud, the filing cabinets too far away. That left the lamp. Marie kissed the transmitter before stripping the adhesive backing off and placing it under the base of the lamp. 

With the primary objective accomplished, she turned her attention to the filing cabinets. A glance at her watch told her ten minutes had passed. She gauged the sedatives would last an hour tops for the sedatives, even mixed with whatever drugs the other girls had taken. Basher would be out for three and probably get beaten to hell for it. Cue the world's smallest violin. She couldn't possibly go through all the files and take pictures in an hour. She had to be smart about it.

Stepping back, she studied the cabinets. The third drawer of the first set had the most smudges around the handle. The second drawer on the second set was the shiniest. Marie went for that one. Someone had taken the time to clean fingerprints on that drawer to hide something important. 

The lock on this one was a little harder to jimmy; the angle was awkward. It took a full three minutes of finessing instead of her usual ninety seconds, and that was time she couldn't afford to lost

The files were indexed in a different language, using a foreign alphabet. Marie accessed a few different memories before settling on Pete's: Cyrillic. The alphabet was Cyrillic, used for Russian. But Pete only spoke Russian, and the more informal, conversational Russian at that. He recognized the alphabet from his childhood, when his mother had taught him using nursery rhymes and books made of thick card. He couldn't read it and, therefore, neither could she. Oh well. MacTac could get a translator. She shone the light on the files and snapped away.

She yanked out the thickest folder. It was full of business transactions from an electronics recycling business, all on very official-looking letterhead. Marie spread the papers in order from top to bottom across the table and took pictures of each one. She did that three times with other papers in the folder, not reaching the end of the pile, before deciding to go for another file. 

She pulled out seven different file folders in total, claiming to be salons, diners, tailors, automotive parts resalers, computer repairs, movers-- none of which she recognized. Savvy move on their part; New York City required thousands of just such businesses. Some could be work-at-home. The city wouldn't even have to do an inspection. Perfect for moving money around. Money that came from illegitimate sources like, say, a brothel.

Marie looked at her watch again. Seven minutes left. What the hell. She opened the third drawer on the first filing cabinet, the one with all the finger smudges. Banded stacks of tens, twenties, and fifties slid around the drawer in orderly lines. There had to be upwards of half a million dollars in there. Marie took a few more pictures, snapped the camera shut, and shoved it back in the handle of her riding crop. 

Two more minutes. She shut the drawer and jimmied the tumblers back in place. A quick sweep of the place showed nothing out of place. She turned her maglight off and opened the sliding door. She slipped the maglight down her pants and opened the cupboard door. A quick look over the shoulder to check on Basher indicated he was still out. She couldn't hear anyone else moving around but she didn't have time to access Logan's powers. She had to relock the cupboard. Hard to concentrate on Lebeau's memories when she had a clock ticking.

Steps shuffled down the second landing. The last tumbler dropped in place. Marie shoved her lock pics into her bun, grabbed a glass off the bar shelf, and poured herself a generous serving of scotch.

Big Kahuna Stacey, came into view, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. Seeing Marie with the glass, she said, "Breakfast of champions."

Marie raised the glass. "Rough fucking night."

"Thought it was just me. What the hell?"

"Maybe the take-out went bad."

"Fuck. Throw it all out. I hate getting the shits."

* * *

A week passed before the rest of the girls acknowledged her outside of work. Understandable considering the way she had introduced herself by punching Stacey out. Marie learned to just go with the odd disconnect between dry-humping with someone at night on the dance floor and ignoring them the next day. At least two of the mutants here looked like teenagers; she noted their rooms and johns who asked for them so she could ID them once she set up a video feed in the second floor hallway.

She also familiarised herself with the more distinct personalities in the house. Blitzen represented the majority of the workers who existed only to earn enough money to buy food, drugs, or alcohol. Sometimes, they even forgot about the food. The only requirement of second floor prostitutes like her alter-ego, Liz, was to look like a mutant. Fur, purple skin, tails, leaves for hair, gelatinous flesh, tentacles, horns-- all were free game. 

The superstars, if ever there were ones in the sex trade industry, lived in the big rooms on the third floor. There was Marilyn, blonde and doll-lipped, and apparently over one thousand pounds. Marie could believe it. Marilyn rarely left her room. She had special doors installed to accommodate her girth but with the effort she and everyone else had to expend to make room for her as she moved around-- Marilyn just outfitted her room with every comfort needed including a bar full of whisky.

Gemini referred to herself as one person although she had two torsos, four arms, and two heads. The torso on the right didn't speak, the one of the left wouldn't shut up. The right one shot up all the heroin, the left one complained about the lack of certified organic food. Gemini's right torso was white like chalk from her hair to her eyes, her left was black like asphalt except for her teeth. Her pelvis and legs were grey. 

Masque could manipulate her appearance and anyone else's by touch, like a sculptor with clay. Bright orange clay specifically, she couldn't change her own pigmentation. Marie had no idea what Masque really looked like. During off-hours, she went around looking like short, blonde, tangerine-skinned Angelina Jolie. She didn't have the teeth of a meth-user but that was likely due to her mutation.

The acknowledged queen of the hive was Stacey X. Stacey's physical mutations were common: diamond-shaped facial ridges, most prominent on her forehead and cheeks, snake-like eyes, pointed ears, talonned fingers and toes, blue hair. More important than her appearance, was her power. Stacey exuded sex pheromones. At a low-level, natural concentration, the pheromones gave her the charismatic air of a movie star at an opening gala. When she cranked it up to eleven, her johns orgasmed just from breathing. Max and Stefan could send a new customer up to her room every fifteen minutes, charging each of them seven hundred dollars a pop. Stacey once boasted about getting an entire room, upwards of twenty people, to go off at once. She went through enough cocaine a day to make a rhino cuddly.

Marie blamed the lack of information on Stacey. The woman held a grudge and wielded her power well. Very few people dared talk to Marie when Stacey clearly had her in her bad books. Still, Stacey's influence played second fiddle to income. Mistress Liz increasingly drew in more and more regulars. Marie didn't quite know how to play the popularity. Illyana's life depended on it. Staying on the second floor allowed her more anonymity, a safer position which also allowed her to disappear into the background and eavesdrop on conversations between involving Stefan or Max. However, second-floor hookers had fewer freedoms than the superstars. She couldn't hear eavesdrop if she wasn't allowed out of her room

Marie zipped her mask up. Almost two weeks constantly in this form and it was getting harder and harder to shift out of. Maybe there was something to that saying about your face freezing if you held it a particular way when the North Wind blew. Or maybe Sauron's powers had worked their way semi-permanently into her genes, the same way Logan's and Magneto's had. Dr. MacTaggert had warned her about that fun side effect of her Novomane abuse. At the time, she'd found nothing wrong with having super-fast healing and the ability to fly. Green scaly skin, she wasn't a huge fan of. She wondered if that was baseline beauty prejudice. 

Her next customer knocked.

"Come in."

In walked an especially scruffy Remy Lebeau. He leaned back on the door to shut it. One hand reached behind to lock it. "I can't tell you how honoured I am to serve you, Mistress Liz."

"What are you doing here?" Marie hissed.

"I'm a naughty boy and must be punished." He caught sight of his handcuffs on the wall. "Aww, you kept them. I'm touched."

Groaning, she sat down on the bed. "Lebeau, I'm too exhausted to play your games. Just tell me already."

"This is a pretty important investigation. You should have more than one contact on the outside."

"And you're offering your services."

Lebeau bowed to the waist.

"What's the catch?" Marie wanted to know.

"No catch. Just a concerned citizen wanting to help catch a killer."

She gave him a withering look.

"Fine. Same deal as always, _sha;_ these guys are the competition. I'm checking them out."

"Thanks for the honesty."

Lebeau sat on the bed behind her. "The boy you chose as contact is sticking out like a squashed thumb. He's uncomfortable and huge. You want someone who fades better in the background."

"So now you're a master thief _and_ a master of disguise."

"The hardest part of the job is the getaway. Do the disguise right and you leave right under their nose."

"I'm awfully touched but I really don't need your help," said Marie.

"You do. Just don't realise it yet." Clapping his hands together, he said, "For example, did you know this place has a basement?"

"Of course I do. I know what a hollow floor sounds like."

"Do you know where the stairs are to this basement?" He waited for her reply and when none came, he beamed. "I know how you can find out."

"So do I. It's all in the architectural history. The style of the building looks about 1950s and they loved their cookie-cutters in those days. If I take any building on this block built around the same time, it'll be the same design. All I need is a man on the outside check out the insides of the dummy house and I'll get the location of the basement stairs here."

Lebeau nodded. "Smart."

"Don't look too surprised. I do know what the hell I'm doing. So if you're offering to help, that's one thing you can do for me."

"Can I at least enjoy my five hundred dollars an hour? I paid for you already."

"They're charging five hundred an hour for me?" Marie felt a spark of pride which she quickly squashed. "I only see a fifty an hour and they take half of it for living expenses."

"Corporate bastards. Unionise!" Lebeau stretched out on the bed. "Can't really expect much from the bratva though. How do you stay on with all this satin?"

"Velcro. Who said anything about the bratva?"

"Kinky."

"You'd know. Lebeau, the bratva?"

"Brighton Beach. Bratva territory. Ain't saying nothing you don't know, _sha._ "

"C'mon, Lebeau, are you holding out on me?"

He winked. "I thought you knew; I left it all on the floor during our lessons."

Marie smacked her own forehead. "I'm never going to live this down, am I?"

"Not a chance, _sha._ One of my few real good pieces of blackmail \--" Lebeau stopped, an untranslatable expression flashed over his face. "It's good material anyway. You should really rethink the Betty Page haircut though. Damn cliche."

"Well, you should really rethink those chin pubes."

"I heard soul patches were on their way back. Figured a customer of this fine establishment would want to be at the height of fashion."

"Really? 'Cause it looks like you ate someone out at a waxing salon."

Lebeau clutched his chest. "You are positively filthy, _sha._ Don't mean that in a sexy way. You say things that'd make Tarantino want to wash your mouth out with soap."

She had to haul him back on topic. "You said bratva. Who're we talking about here? The Solntsevskaya? The Vostochevskaya? Izmailovskaya?"

"Like a dog on a bone, you." He patted a spot on the bed beside him. "Give an old man a bit of sugar and I might dangle a bit more meat."

"Ew." But Marie sat. Lebeau took her left hand, the one closest to him, and started to tug her gloves off. "You don't want to do that," she said.

He held his hands up, covered in transparent, vinyl gloves. "I got this. You take a load off this time. Ever had a hand massage?"

Marie wiggled her hand out from between his, sighing, "I don't have time for--"

He caught her elbow. "Are you clinically incapable of accepting a gift?"

"Yes," she said sulkily.

"Tough. I'm being nice to you." He pulled her glove off completely, leaving her skin bare to the elbow. Turning her hand palm side up, he rotated her thumb gently around its knuckle, then her index finger, moving down the row to her pinkie. He pinched each flesh section of each finger, hard enough to be just this side of painful. The motions released tension she didn't know she held between her shoulder blades. "Andrei Semyonov and the Vostochevskaya owned this territory for coming onto forty years. He owns businesses above board, too."

"We know. That's what makes him so slippery."

"He might be slipping a bit more than that." He rubbed between the bones her her palm, firm, circular motions that send electricity up her wrists. "His captains are out more often than he is. He keeps himself pretty holed up in his castle and just commands everyone from there. Some say he ain't even doing that anymore; the captains are the ones running the town."

"Not everyone can be as hands on as you," said Marie. "Are Max or Stefan captains?"

He flashed her a grin. "That would be telling. And telling would mean you ain't gonna be earning your paycheque."

Translation: He wasn't sure himself and needed her to dig around for him. "What the hell am I going to do with you, Lebeau?"

"Got a list. Left it in my other mesh t-shirt."

* * *

On day ten, by her estimate, Marie finally caught a break just before the happy hour rush. She was sitting on the lap of one of the second-floor regulars, whispering all sorts of filthy and medically improbable things, when Stefan came in.

"Liz! My best girl." he folded her into a cologne-drenched embrace. "How would you like to make a killing?"

"Do you even have to ask?"

"A friend of ours-- a family friend-- is throwing a party. It's a business party so he wants to make sure everyone's happy. I've been telling him what a hit you are--"

"Shucks, sugar, you're gonna go and make me blush."

"Nothing but the truth, baby. This--" he gestured up and down her body-- "works. I don't know why, I don't care. You're one of our biggest money makers."

Marie slid a claw down Stefan's tie. "Does that make you happy, sugar? I like making you happy."

"Lizzy baby, I am ecstatic. I could kiss you but I need to start the party off sober. God knows, everyone else will show up drunk." Stefan winked again and goosed her. Marie kept her simper plastered on. One day, she'd break his fingers. 

Less than an hour later, a black SUV pulled up in the alley behind The Genie. Marie and seven other second-floor girls piled into it. The windows were tinted from the inside as well, keeping passengers from looking out. Marie's heart rate escalated. Tinted cars and mystery places never boded well in organized crime. Dumping this many bodies would be difficult but not impossible. She tensed for a fight.

The ride went on for half an hour. To her surprise and relief, the door opened to Turtle Bay, an affluent but not as ostentatious an area as other Upper East Side neighourhoods. Luxury cars dropped guests off discretely, waiting for three or four vehicles to pass by before stopping at the house. Security led her and the other girls around the back entrance; they were, after all, here to work. Marie clutched her cape tighter around her body. 

While intimate, a mafiya party like this one was all about making connections and showing power. Power brokers, legal and not, rubbed elbows here. If the mutant prostitution ring went all the way to the top, MacTac could RICO this whole outfit. If Stefan and Max did, in fact, work under Andrei Semyonov, that was a good half of the Russian Mafiya in the east coast cobbled.

Once inside, Marie and the other girls split up to work the room. Marie scanned the floor for the likeliest candidates. Stefan was nowhere to be seen but Max stood beside a man in his late sixties or early seventies, stooped and leaning on a cane. By Max's deferential manner, this old man was pretty important. Could this be Andrei Semyonov? He didn't seem like the submissive type who'd go for her act but that was okay. She only needed to be close enough to the conversation.

Shrugging her cape back, Marie made a beeline for Max. He raised his chin, brows arched in question. When she got close enough, she laid her riding crop on his cheek. "I got a bone to pick with you."

"Business can wait until we return to the Genie," said Max.

"Nuh-uh. Nothing to do with money. This is about me." She leaned forward, near enough for her breath to warm his face. "You ain't ever visited me, Max. I don't take well to being ignored." She slid the end of the riding crop from his cheek, down his neck, then suddenly smacked his rear.

Max's nostrils flared. "I never taste the wares, Liz. I'm sorry, sir, would you like to continue our conversation elsewhere?"

The old man nodded, not even acknowledging her. Max followed him. Marie ducked behind a pair of servers. They passed her by without a second glance. She waited a few seconds more, waiting for them to forget about her. They took a panelled hallway as she circled the room. Each of the Genie girls had a john. Some johns had human or human-looking prostitutes on their laps. Some had one of each. Marie made a big show of dragging one of the men into the bathroom, worked him over a bit, and left him hogtied with a warning to be a good boy until she came back to end his punishment. He'd quivered as he nodded.

Alibi created, Marie relaxed her Liz shape slightly. After a count of ten, Max, the old man, and the closest security guards were out of view. She turned her cape inside-out and drew out some sleeves hidden in the seam. The cape now looked like a three-quarter length coat. Pulling it on, she snuck around the edges of the party until she came to the hallway Max and the old man had taken. She peered around the corner before heading down the hall as well. 

There were doors on all the north side's walls. Marie tried the first one. Locked. The second. Also locked. Ditto the third and final door. The house had a second floor but the staircase banded the main living room. No way she'd get up there without being noticed. No way the old man could have gone upstairs without Marie seeing him.

She stood back. The second and third door had slivers of light leaking from underneath each of them. The first door was dark but she could hear faint mutterings coming from behind it. She couldn't listen in without security spotting her. She had to get into the room behind Door Number Three. She hoped it was a bathroom. An unoccupied one.

Closing her eyes, Marie accessed one of Lebeau's memories to pick the door lock. Using Lebeau's memories was coming easier and easier these days. Almost as easy as Logan and Magneto. She didn't know if his personality was that strong or if she manipulated absorbed powers so much that her body retained them more and more, like a mixed martial artist adding new skills to her repertoire. 

The lock clicked. Marie pushed the door. It opened. Light from the street illuminated the furniture closest to the windows. Music stands, some with sheet music, waited for attention. String instruments in their cases lined one wall. Two rows of antique chairs stood across from the stands, empty of an audience. A credenza near the door held a clutter of picture frames. Marie closed the door behind her and turned on a lamp.

There was no rhyme or reason to the order of the pictures. Faded black and whites mingled with blue-tinged late-century pictures, sharp digital images, and yellowed fifties prints. There were formal school pictures, candid family gatherings, a couple wedding portraits. At front row centre was a family portrait, a posed composition in a 1980s soft-focus style with fake smiles from both parents. The weary boys in the picture didn't bother to fake their smiles. The mother was dark-haired with high, rosy cheekbones, and a vaguely Asian look to her eyes. The dad wore a close-clipped beard and was slighter than his wife. The older of the two boys had inherited his father's lean build. The younger one wasn't pudgy, not exactly, but he had bulk to his frame. He'd probably make a great linebacker. Or, since these guys were Russian, a great defenseman on a hockey team.

She recognized the mother in many of the other frames. The youngest recognizable image of her was at a church, wearing an ornately lacy dress. The pictures of a baby girl from the fifties could be her. As Marie traced the timeline of the woman's life in pictures, the mother went from a carefree child with her head tilted back against the wind rushing into a swing to a stubborn-chinned teenager looking up from a book to a sad-eyed adult posing stiffly in a designer dress. There she was seated beside a piano, partially silhouetted by sunshine streaming from a tall window. Marie turned. The mother had sat at the piano in this room, she realised, with light streaming from a window now covered in heavy drapes.

The picture shelf was obviously important but was the room itself worth bugging? It was dust-free but that didn't mean it was used often. The owner probably had cleaners. She needed to get into that first room. Marie walked to the wall shared by the first and second room. She pressed her ear against it and only got muffled voices. Once again, she pulled up Logan's powers, this time to use his sense of hearing.

"--think we should do something about it," Max was saying.

The old man said something Marie couldn't make out. It seemed like another language. Probably Russian. She tried to use Pete's working knowledge of Russian and Logan's hearing at the same time, but failed. Apparently, she still couldn't multi-task all her absorbed powers. Better to glean what she could of Max's side of the conversation in this case.

"I understand your concerns, sir--"

" _Nyet_!" barked the old man. "You do not." He went off in a spiel of Russian, sounding like he was ripping Max a new one. Marie wished she'd absorbed someone with x-ray vision. She wanted to see Max's expression in the face of this dressing down. Now more than ever, she was convinced the old man was Andrei Semyonov. His age and the neighbourhood within which the Genie was built fit into Semyonov's known territory. She had to get a bug into that room.

Max's voice rose, to Marie's surprise. She didn't think butter could melt in that man's mouth. "Respectfully, sir, I don't believe you do Aleksandra any honour with this decision. They will call you weak and past your prime--"

The unmistakable sound of someone's palm smacking a cheek cracked through the wall, making Marie start a little. Max's tirade was cut short. The old man murmured, the power behind his threat clear even without translation.

The old man ended the threat with "Do you understand me, boy?"

In his usual icy tone, Max said, "Whatever you say, sir. I'll tell the men."

"Good. Go now. I wish to be alone."

Marie listened for any indication that Max was headed her way but his footsteps receded back to the party. She let out a sigh of relief. Turning her attention back to the other room, Marie overheard the laboured taps of an older generation on a keyboard. What she'd give for a snake-mounted camera right now. To her surprise, piano music began playing. The sound was tinny, nothing like professional recording equipment. A steady murmur of indistinguishable conversation and static hisses muffled the music now and again. It was a recording, Marie realised. Probably a home video from a VHS reel converted into digital form. The loudest voices were, again, in another language. Russian. Dammit, she needed a bug in that room.

More than that, she needed to get close to Andrei Semyonov. She swept the room with a more thoughtful eye. Despite the many pictures, the music room lacked traditionally feminine touches. No flowers, no lacy decorations, no fruity or flowery scents. So Semyonov was divorced, widowed, or lived away from his wife. Marie bet on the second option. The mafiya, as with most gangs and organized crime syndicates, were hopelessly stuck in the fifties when it came to women. They were trophies, admired for their beauty, thought of as brainless. Wives and daughters were virginal princesses; mistresses were sexual objects. Either would have left some sort of mark on a man's house. Going by Semyonov's attitude towards the party, he had no interest in a mistress or a wife right now.

But there was a woman who roused his emotions. Aleksandra. Marie bet she was his daughter. For some reason, she wasn't here and he missed her. Maybe she was dead; Max had said something about honouring Aleksandra's memory. She played the piano. Pete's memories filled her in on the piece's name: Hungarian Rhapsody by Rachmaninoff. He'd had to practice it, too, as a child. If she was the apple of the mafiya boss' eye, she must've been everything that a proper lady should be. But the pictures on the shelves indicated a quiet sort of rebellion to Aleksandra, in the tilt of her teenaged chin, and the mulishness with which she wore her designer wardrobe. Maybe Semyonov loved her best because she could stand up to him instead of sucking up.

It was precious little to go on but she had to make a move. Marie hurried to the piano, pulled the bench out, and let Pete's memories loose. The notes stuttered out of the instrument at first as Pete's old memories warred with hands and feet that had never touched a piano. But slowly, like a glove pulled taut, his muscle memory took over and the movements began to fit. She heard Anne coaching her, coaching Pete. Without raising her voice, she still made her commands take on the strength of steel. Marie revelled in the memories for its own sake. She had so few functional family memories from her personal experience and the people she absorbed. The Rasputin family felt like a hot cup of soup on a bitterly cold winter day.

The door slammed open and the lights snapped on. Marie quickly shifted back into full Liz form and turned around. The old man glared at her from behind bushy silver eyebrows.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"The party was getting boring," she said.

"You're not here to be entertained; you _are_ the entertainment. Get out of here. Before I order Maksim to throw you out."

Maksim. Max's full name? Marie tried a different tack. She walked to a liquor table and filled a small tumbler with vodka. "Sorry. Your piano's gorgeous and I... You have a great family." She gestured to the shelf of photographs with the tumbler.

"They are none of your business."

She gave him the drink. "I know. Just saying. It's nice. Seeing family pictures."

"I suppose this is where you cry and weasel more money out of me for your starving, crippled baby brother."

"Hell no," said Marie. "My parents ditched me in a park when I was three and my scales started coming in. My foster parents can die in a fire. If I have any brothers or sisters, I got too many of my own problems and try to solve theirs. Don't mean I can't appreciate a functional family when I see one. It's like reality TV."

That made the old man crack a smile. "You chose your gimmick well. You have a lot of attitude to go with that outfit."

"Pick on people before they can pick on you."

" _Budem._ " The old man emptied the tumbler. Marie refilled it. "Family. Family is very rarely functional, _devchonku._ My family, they look good in pictures."

"Gorgeous."

"This is my girl." He pointed to the mother in the family portrait. "My only girl, my middle child. Boys on either side of her but, bah, they were not half as bright. A parent should not have favourites but she is mine."

"Where is she now?"

"Far away. For work."

"That's too bad," said Marie. "But you got your boys."

"My Nikolai is dead, many years ago. The eldest. Ruslan is also gone for business reasons. He thinks he needs no help from his feeble old father. So, you see, not functioning very well, are we?"

"I guess not."

He held his tumbler out for more and Marie filled it.

"My Aleksandra, she is bright, hard-working. Not beautiful like her mother. Her mother modelled many times for public art works in Russia. I brought her here and she modelled in magazines. But Aleksandra made beautiful babies, eh?" He pointed to the little pouting boys.

"They're gonna be lady-killers," Marie agreed. Inwardly, she winced at her own wording. Were those boys Stefan and Max? They didn't look alike but that didn't have to mean anything. Max certainly seemed to know the old man well enough to stay at his side all night.

Speak of the devil. Max strode in, his usual frown even more pronounced this time, especially when he saw her. "You. What are you doing here? What were you thinking leaving a guest tied up?"

"Which guest?" asked the old man.

"One of the Cuban contingent, sir."

Languidly, Marie shrugged. "He was a bad, bad boy."

The old man burst out laughing as Max began to say, "I'm sorry she disturbed you, sir."

"You should be," said the old man. "You know I dislike these things."

"A necessary evil, we agreed. Next time, I'll make sure to hire more obedient workers. I assure you, this one will never attend another party."

Shit. Marie would have to do some serious work to stay at the Genie at this rate. She had enough to get them on prostitution and trafficking charges but she wanted a murder charge that stuck. She wouldn't be able to make that arrest if she had a bad case of dead.

"Leave her," said the old man. "She's snoopy and uppity but she made me laugh today of all days. Bring her next time. I might actually enjoy the party."

Max smoothed his frown out. "Whatever you desire, _dyadya_ Andrei."

Score! Theory confirmed. Marie barely maintained her composure.

"And you, girl." Andrei kissed her hand. "Untie that man. Make sure he does not like it too much."

"Is he dysfunctional, too?" Marie asked.

"He will be."

"Whatever you desire, _dyadya_ Andrei. C'mon, Max. I have a Cuban to smoke." She bussed Andrei's cheek then smacked Max's butt with her riding crop on the way out.

She made it all the way to the main room's entrance before Max caught up with her. He curled an arm around her, sliding his hand up and down her spine in a seemingly affectionate manner. He finally rested his hand on her nape, working his fingers around the muscles and tendons through the high collar. Coming from anyone else, it would've been a good massage. Marie was all too aware of his thumb and middle fingers pressing against her carotid arteries.

"You're pretty smart for a whore," he said. "Butter up Andrei all you want if you think that'll get you higher up. But remember, he's old and on his way out. When he does, I'll be the one calling the shots. And unlike that senile old has-been, I'm going to remember every good and bad turn you've done me."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Marie.

"Right. Don't try to play politics in this shark tank, girl. You haven't got a chance in hell."


	7. Chapter 7

The bouncers knocked a five-minute warning on the door. Marie mentally sighed in relief. She was pretty sure this was the last john through her room tonight. As last calls went, this guy wasn't so bad. She wouldn't've have pegged him as the type to buy a prostitute but then again, this op was blasting a lot of her preconceptions out of the water. 

Marie snapped the flogger against his back one last time. "Now, what've you got to say for yourself?"

"Sorry, Mistress Liz."

"For?"

"For everything. I'm... I'm scum. I'm a dirty scumbag. I... I'm not worthy."

"No, you aren't. And I highly doubt you ever will be." She undid the ropes tying him down to the floor first before removing his blindfold. She'd learned that order the hard way. Some people did _not_ understand the meaning of roleplaying. Nor did they understand that _she_ was in charge in this room, not the other way around, despite their fantasies.

The john rubbed the feeling back into his hands. "So... um..."

"Pay the rest at the bar, sugar. See you around soon."

He ducked his head between his shoulders. "I'm not really sure if this is my thing, exactly. I mean, you did it really well but--" He kept rubbing his hands. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to insult you or anything."

That made Marie laugh. "No offense taken, sugar. You're the first person to apologize to me for real instead of in the game. And if this ain't your thing, then it ain't. Although, are you sure I can't convince you otherwise? You gotta try everything twice at least."

"I'm pretty sure," he said. He stuck his hand out. "I'm, uh, really pleased to have made your acquaintance."

"Charmed. It's Rory, right?" She took his hand and shook it. His palms were clammy and sweaty, and he released too soon. 

"Yes, ma'am."

"You said that a little too comfortably."

"Force of habit." He nodded again. "Good night, Liz."

"Have a good one, Rory."

As soon as he left, Marie let out a great big stretch. She stuck her head out the door, looking for the bouncers. "Hey, Tank!"

The bouncer turned. "Yeah?"

"That last call?"

"Yup."

"Thank fuck! Jesus, you'd think my pussy came with a revolving door."

The music downstairs cut abruptly, all the clubbing type lights shut off in favour of normal, white, fluorescent bulbs that did nothing to hide the haggardness of all the girls streaming back up to their little cubby rooms. Blitzen didn't so much stagger as crawl. Sometimes, she didn't even make it up the stairs; the bouncers either carried her up or left her wherever she'd passed out for the night. Girl was _messed up_ in the worst way. Marie doubted she'd make the rest of the year with her habit.

Seeing the other girls pass Blitzen by, Marie let out a real sigh this time, and went to help. "Come on, Blitz. Time for bed."

Blitzen's head lolled across her shoulders. She drooled a bit out of the corner of her mouth.

"Come on. Left foot then right foot."

Eventually, they made it. Thank goodness Blitz's room wasn't too far from the stairs. Marie deposited her as gently as possible on the bed. Go figure that was when Blitz woke up. "The air is like dancing."

"Sure it is."

"It's like synchronicity, right? All things happening at the same time towards the same purpose unplanned. And sometimes, it's pretty and sometimes, it makes you cry." Blitzen blinked away actual tears. "Crying for the pretty even."

"I get you," Marie lied. Then she got angry, like she always did seeing junkies strung out. She never knew who she was matter at: the dealers for dealing, the users for using, or everyone else for not giving a shit. Blitzen obviously did not have the mental capacity for responsible decision-making. Max, Stefan, and all the johns who went to her room took advantage of that.

"It's like my room," Blitzen continued. "Bad things happen to my room."

"I'm sure they do," Marie said and made a mental note to plant a camera in Blitzen's room to photograph and charge every single john that went through, the assbastards.

"Sometimes, the sandman comes to eat you up. He eats here once a month, y'know."

"Sure he does, Blitz."

"He ate Zeb. Ate him up. Fur and all. Left the stripes."

Zeb was a _him_? A furry, striped _him_? How many furry, striped male prostitutes could there be? Marie took Blitzen's hands to steady her own. "Blitz, where did you that about Zeb?"

"They talk. They think I can't hear but I do. I just... the listening. I hear it but the listening hurts. It falls out."

"They? The other hookers?"

"Sure."

"Do you know who knew Zeb the best?"

"Sure." Blitzen's eyes drifted closed. "Want a hit. Baby, can you give me a hit?"

"As soon as you tell me who knew Zeb the best."

"But I want a hit now!"

"No hits until you answer."

Tears welled up in Blitzen's eyes. "Liz. _Liz!_ I need one. I _need_ it."

"Then tell me who Zeb's friend is."

"The walls!" Blitzen wailed. "The walls talk to me. They won't stop. They're mean. Almost as mean as you. Gimme a hit, c'mon, give it to me."

Disgusted with herself and Blitzen, Marie left without another word, heading for her own room. The bouncers would lock her in-- they locked all the girls into their rooms-- but this time, she welcomed the isolation. Every bit of the puzzle she found made her realise there were a dozen more pieces out there she didn't even know about. She'd been at the Genie for almost a month now; Illyana disappeared two months ago. Pete hadn't been by with news of Emma's search in six days. 

To top it all off, lack of sleep was going to kill her. Maybe if she ate something... Marie tried her door just in case rounds hadn't been done but no such lock. She could turn Magneto's powers on to undo the bolt but she wasn't sure re-heated pizza was worth the effort. Instead, she used Logan's powers to scout the outside. Her hearing zeroed down to the ground floor where all the interesting stuff always happened.

She heard Stefan's enthusiastic salesman voice first. "As you can see, sir, we've done a lot to the place."

Sir? The only person Stefan would ever call "sir" was Semyonov as far as Marie knew. She lay full on the floor and pressed her ear against it to hear better. The soundproofing in the place was good enough to give Logan's senses a hard time.

"This is too obvious. The police will know exactly what you are doing." That speaker was definitely Semyonov. 

"We own the entire street," said Stefan. "And the building is completely soundproofed. I shot a gun in here once and from the outside on a quiet night, it only sounded like a broken stick. On good nights, we pull in thirty thousand dollars easily. Minus the expenses, that's fifteen thousand dollars a night, seven nights a week. We haven't even been open a year and, well, you've seen the income. Seven figures. That's not even including the money we get from the websites."

"At least you are distributing the money appropriately."

"Of course. We're using every trick you've taught us, sir, and it's working brilliantly."

"Hmm. So, what is this news that must be shared here? I do not like to be late for the ballet."

Stefan's voice receded. Marie crept along the floor, searching for a sweet spot but they must have moved to the other side of the house. The side with the bar. The secret room. She cursed. Not only did she need to know what they would talk about in that room, this could be her last chance to ingratiate herself to Semyonov. Max certainly would never bring her to another party and Semyonov apparently no longer wanted to dirty his hands with business.

She headed for the door. Her disguise melted away as she accessed Magneto's powers. The lock outside the door felt fragile enough. Destroying it would cost too much energy and make everyone suspicious besides so instead, she tipped the bolt open with a flick of her finger. She unlocked the bar locks for all the bedroom doors as well to throw the suspicion off herself. Someone was going to get beaten up for sleeping on the job. Marie couldn't find it in herself to feel too bad for whoever that was.

All right, so Marie had to take advantage of the fact that Semyonov missed his precious little princess of a daughter. Ninety percent of her wardrobe would lead to the complete opposite of that. Unless Semyonov had an entirely different reason for missing his kid. First of all, _gross._ Secondly, Marie didn't get that vibe from him. Having absorbed a couple sexually abusive dickwads in her trek from Mississippi to Canada, she recognized slime like that from a mile away. No, Semyonov was just your regular thug done up in bespoke suits to hide the bloodstains.

Marie pulled on jeans and a tee shirt. The shirt was a touch on the tight side but it had the most coverage. She wiped her face clean of make-up and braided her hair to one side. The effect was a younger, more innocent looking Liz. She didn't resemble Aleksandra a bit but that was where her acting would come into play, thanks to Pete's memories of his mom. She hoped she'd never have to explain that to her friend.

Without bothering to muffle her footsteps, Marie quickly made her way out of her room and down the stairs. Whatever Stefan had to show Semyonov, she hoped it wouldn't take too long; she had to be gone before the bouncers came back around. But at the same time, she had to make enough noise to draw Stefan and Semyonov out of the hidden room if that's where they were. 

To give them enough time to notice, Marie all but stomped to the ground floor washroom, ran the water, and flushed the toilet. Precisely three minutes later, someone rammed at the door.

"Open up!"

Marie obeyed and was hauled out, hanging, by her wrist. She didn't have to fake the tears in her eyes. "Owww! What are you-- let go!"

"What are you doing down here?" demanded Tank.

"Peeing! I was hungry then I needed to go--" She pretended to spot Stefan just then. "Tell him to let me go."

"How did you get out of your room?" Stefan demanded.

"I opened it, duh. It's not like it was locked." Marie wriggled, trying to touch the floor with her toes. Her shoulder felt like it was about to pop out of joint. "Owww! C'mon, let go!"

Tank snorted. "So you can dish it out, but you can't hash it. Maybe I should--"

"Take her back upstairs," said Stefan. "And later you can explain your job to me one more time, just to make sure you actually know how to do it."

That wilted Tank right down. "Boss, I swear I--"

Stefan glared and it was enough to hunch Tank's shoulders down. He lowered his arm enough to let Marie's feet skim the floor. Behind Stefan, Semyonov studied the scene, less than impressed. He didn't seem to recognize her or if he did, he didn't care. Dammit. Not the way Marie wanted this particular bout of insanity to end. Something Russian. She needed to say something Russian.

"Can I at least get something to eat?" she asked and was ignored. "I was seriously jonesing for some syrnikis but I'd settle for toast, for fuck's sake."

Semyonov's laugh cracked the tension. "You know syrnikis?"

"Love them."

He turned to Stefan. "You feed them our food?"

Confused, Stefan said, "I just give the boys money to buy food. I don't know what they get."

"What kind of syrnikis?" Semyonov asked Marie.

Again, she dove into Pete's thoughts. "Just normal ones. With cherry kissel."

Semyonov laughed again. This time, even Tank looked freaked out. "A whore who knows Rachmaninoff and appreciates traditional syrnikis with kissel. Where did you find this one, Stefan?"

"Do you want her? You can have her, boss. That goes without saying." Stefan snapped his fingers at Tank who released Marie suddenly. She tripped to her feet, barely catching herself on the wall.

"When my Aleksandra was a little girl, she loved syrnikis and kissel," said Semyonov. "Come with me, girl. We shall have the cook make some."

Marie rubbed her wrist, doing her best to be wide-eyed. "Sure! Thanks so much, mister, uh, boss, sir. Could I just... I need shoes."

Semyonov jerked his head at Tank. "Fetch her shoes." Then the Stefan, he said, "We wait for them to make a mistake. This is too delicate to act hastily."

"Are you sure we can afford to wait?"

Semyonov narrowed his eyes. "We wait. Girl--"

"Liz," said Marie.

"Come."

* * *

Her fork crunched through the syrniki's skin. Pink syrup jewelled the fritters, a lovely sour-sweet contrast to the richness of the cheese. Despite accessing Pete's memories, Marie couldn't really imagine what syrnikis tasted like. They were like little deep-fried cheesecake bites. Finally, an upside to this undercover op.

"You like it," said Semyonov.

"The stuff I got before didn't taste like this," she said.

"My cook makes his own cheese."

"Hmmrmmf." Marie pushed the plate towards him. "You have some more. I feel like a pig."

The old man shook his hands. "I do not like many sweets."

"Oh. Uh. Thanks." She looked around, letting some discomfort show. "So. Uh. Nice place."

"It is the family home."

"Yeah. I could really tell with the pictures and all."

"My wife liked to take pictures. I told her at the time she was making too much of everything but she liked to do it. They do have their uses." He ran a hand down one of the frames. "Sometimes at my age, you forget little things. Nothing important, but small details. The pictures help me remember."

"Who's that?" Marie asked, pointing to the frame he was touching. The picture was of a young man or an older teenager--- it was hard to tell with the goatee. The facial hair suited his angular features. Dark brown hair flopped over his eyes. It was a posed picture with a slightly younger Semyonov seated in a high-backed chair and the young man standing beside him with a hand on Semyonov's shoulder.

"That is my grandson, Mikhail, Aleksandra's eldest," Semyonov said. His voice deepened with pride. "Is he not handsome?"

"He sure is," _a douchenozzle_ Marie mentally added. The hairstyle, the suit, and the flashy jewellery all spoke of early 2K wanna-be thug-life guido. Marie wouldn't be surprised if somewhere out there was a digital image of Mikhail kissing his biceps while holding a hand gun. "I don't think I've met him."

Semyonov drooped. "He is dead. Murdered."

"I'm so sorry."

"There is no need. He has been avenged." Semyonov touched his fingers to his lips then touched the glass on the picture frame. Marie made a mental note to ask MacTac to look into any gang wars involving Vostochevskaya in the late nineties to early 2K. It was a long shot but she might be able to hang Semyonov's operation on cold case homicides.

Needing more information, she asked, "Aleksandra has two kids, right?"

"Three now. Piotr is... away. With his mother. He worshipped Mikhail, wanted to do everything his brother did. There is a girl but--" Semyonov waved vaguely in the air. He stooped a bit more, leaning on his cane. "I am tired now."

"Of course, _dyadya._ Let's get you to your office."

"I can go myself!" he snapped, pulling his arm away from her. "I am not an invalid! I can still run my empire."

"Of course."

"Of course, of course, bah!" He jerked his hand through the air, sneering. "You are here because Maksim and Stefan sent you."

"I'm here because I want to be," Marie corrected.

He snorted.

"It's true. This is better than what I'd be doing at the Genie. The food's not as good and I'd be starting my tricks, like, two hours ago so by this time, I'm hungry, hungover, probably pissed off, and wanting to kill someone for five minutes to myself without the bouncers knocking on the door saying 'time' like it's a fuu-- freaking Olympic race. There's a piano here, for fu-- Pete's sake!"

There had been more than a little Skids thrown into that tirade but Marie knew most of the grievances were her own. Semyonov stared at her, his face impassive.

"You should go," he said finally. "I am tired."

Dammit. She couldn't get any more clues from the old man tonight. "Yessir."

"You may continue to call me _dyadya._ "

She nodded slowly. "Yes, _dyadya._ "

The taxi dropped her off at the Genie by sunrise. The darkened house revealed nothing of about its illicit business from the street. Marie was surprised that she was so surprised. She knew how well-masked the place was from the stake out a month ago but it seemed like years had passed since she went into the Genie.

This time, she side door opened before she even knocked. Basher stepped aside to let her in. Stefan stood behind him, his arms crossed, with a slimy smirk on his face. "I knew you were good but I didn't know you were _that_ good."

"What?" asked Marie.

"The Boss told us to move you upstairs."

Marie gave him a smirk of her own. "When you got it, you got it, sugar."

* * *

The next night, lizzed out to the max, Marie swung her hips all the way down the stairs to pick up her next custo-- erm, john. Dammit. She'd been undercover too long. She was starting to think like them. Good thing Pete was her next customer. She needed a bit of the outside world to ground her.

She reached the main floor. Music throbbed through the floor itself, vibrating up her body. Funny how even covered from head to toe, the PVC seemed to somehow make her feel more naked. The multicoloured lights hit her body, painting it in splotches of cyan, magenta, and yellow. The lights rendered all the inhabitants of the room into cartoonish reflections of themselves, graphically covered and flattened. She smacked a few on the ass with her riding crop, grazing Blitzen along the thigh as she danced with one of her regulars.

She didn't even recognize Pete at first. He wore completely un-Pete-like clothes-- fitted dress pants, pointed leather shoes, a cashmere sweater over a patterned dress shirt, and a three-quarter length coat. He looked exactly like the kind of guy that could spend a few hundred dollars a night for a hooker. Heck, he looked edible enough _not_ to pay for a woman. 

A parade of girls danced around him, trying to get his attention. A man Marie recognized as one of Stefan and Max's people sat beside him, the two of them engaged in conversation. It looked pretty serious. The man poured serving after serving of vodka into Pete's shot glass. The poor guy beside him-- he looked familiar; Ryan or Rory or something-- couldn't steal the bottle away for a drink. Pete looked interested enough to keep Max's underling talking but kept looking up to the stairs, waiting for her.

Marie paused at the bottom step. She leaned a hip on the wall, tapping out a rhythm in the same beat as the lounge music using her riding crop. She didn't think Pete saw her yet. One of the second floor girls, the leafgirl she beat up on her first day, tried to draw his attention by caressing his arms and dragging her leaf-hair across his face. Uncharacteristically, Pete kept his attention on the girls, pausing only occasionally to look at Max and Stefan's man. The lights hid any sign of his perpetual blush. But then again, maybe he wasn't blushing.

Finally, he saw her the next time he looked up. His body language changed minutely, the hardness in the set of his shoulders disappearing for a second. It was enough for his small entourage to notice. Leafgirl pouted. The mafiya man smiled his skeevy best and leaned over to whisper something in Pete's ear. Pete gave him a stiff smile then stood, straightening his sleeves. Leafgirl, Blitzen, and a couple others clung to him lightly, wanting a bit more of the action. They knew a high roller when they saw one.

He met her at the foot of the stairs. Even standing on the second to last step, Marie was shadowed by Pete's bulk. "Hello," he said.

She laid the riding crop on his cheek. "Ready to be run through your paces?"

He nodded. Taking his hand, Marie led him up the two flights of stairs to her new room. Stacey X met her in the hallway as she led her own john into her room, one of the regulars. Stacey glared over his shoulder and kept that glare until Marie closed the door to her room. Yeesh, some people were so territorial.

As soon as the door closed, Pete settled on the bed. "As pleased as your team is about Semyonov taking a shine to you, you realise we've used up half of this month's budget for this one visit."

"I'm worth it. You know I am. But speaking of budgets, where did this come from?" She gestured to his wardrobe. "I'll have you know I'm an expert shopper even though I don't indulge as often as I'd like so I know how much that coat and those shoes cost. You could buy two girls around here with those shoes. One for each foot."

"I spent the rest of the budget on it." Pete waited a beat before adding, "I'm just kidding. Storm gave me some money with instructions to blend in better."

"It worked a bit. The men only suck up to the highest rollers. Not quite sure if you should blend in or fade into the background though."

Pete made a face. "Marie, I'm six-foot-seven. I'm not going to fade into the background. I thought I'd best ingratiate myself with the staff. That way, if I'm poking around, I have an excuse."

"There's an awful lot of us in hiding around here. I just hope you're getting something from the bug in the basement. That bookshelf was as far as I could go."

"They don't actually spend as much time there as we hoped and the sound is a little muffled sometimes but it's all right."

Marie flopped back on the bed. "I'm going to try to go back to the boss' house then. Plant more bugs. Maybe get some more information out of him. I don't think he knows anything about who's behind the murders but if any of his lackeys do, I want to catch it."

"In that case, you'll want this as well." He pressed plastic rectangle to her palm, a quarter of an inch wide and two inches long with indentations on two sides. "It's a harddrive bug. You need to put it directly on the wires coming out of the harddrive and it'll feed the contents of the largest and the most accessed files to another computer. I'm not sure how but Kitty assures me it works perfectly."

"I probably shouldn't ask how she got one, should I?"

"Probably not."

Marie pocketed the bug.

"How do you know Semyonov's not behind the murders?" asked Pete. "He's a gangster. The head gangster. Men reach that position by being killers."

"True but once they reach the top everything gets too messy. Someone like Semyonov doesn't waste his reputation killing hookers. He'll save the big, showy hits for more important people-- rivals, snitches, people who'll stand as examples. I can see him having a psycho killer in his inner circle though. Someone to act as an enforcer. Like a rabid pitbull on a leash."

"Do you suspect anyone in particular?"

"Obviously Max and Stefan have the best access and the best motive," said Marie. "Maybe a couple of the bouncers are looking to move their way up the ladder and are doing more dirty work. I need to nail down motive."

"None of the girls are talking," Pete said.

"The first rule of staying alive on the street is keeping your mouth shut. Some of the girls are a crack pipe away from being so brain-fried, they couldn't tell you day from night. Hell, the only reason I know day from night is when security unlatches the doors."

"Then I hope you can use this." He pulled out his wallet, opened it, and gave her three credit cards.

"Thanks but we only take cash."

"Peel it open." He picked the edge of one credit card with a fingernail. Eventually, it unfolded into a thinner, larger piece of plastic. He picked at the edge again. The card quadrupled its original size. "I can't get the last edge."

Marie used her much thinner fingernails to pry the last two sheets apart. Tiny type covered the thin gold plastic. She read the first few paragraphs. They were transcripts, presumably of the conversations transmitted from The Genie. "Okay, this is amazeballs. I really do feel like James Bond now."

"I hope you have something to hide it in."

"This is like cling wrap. I can legitimately hide it under the bed and no one will know." She picked at the type. "Hmm. It looks like it might flake off though. Maybe I can fix it with some hairspray. Might have to lay the smack down to get a stash of my own. Or hit up the bouncers and let me tell you, it's a freaking joy dealing with them."

Pete's brows wrinkled. "Are you all right? You haven't been hurt again?"

"No one's touched me when I didn't want them to if that's what you're asking," Marie said. "This kinky whipping stuff actually works. Who'da thunk? I guess it explains Frost's popularity with men."

He winced. "Illyana's taken a strange liking to Emma. I'm afraid once she starts school at MassAcad, she'll start wanting designer clothes. Triple the price for half the cloth."

Marie punched his arm. "Prude."

"She's my little sister. If I had my way, I'd lock her up in nun school."

"You wouldn't do that."

"No." He gave her his sweet, bashful smile. "I wish she'd come up with it on her own though."

"What else is going on in the outside world?"

"More of the same. Gas prices are up, minimum wage can't catch up, Kitty and I broke up, the Simpsons are still on--"

"Wait, back up. You and Kitty are over?"

He shrugged. "Yes. It... It's been a long time coming, really. She's working in the UK and I can't-- won't-- relocate. We haven't been on the same page for almost a year now. Mostly, we've stayed together out of habit. Because everyone expected us to get married and have a half dozen X-babies."

"Damn. Sorry, man. That's kind of shitty with everything going on right now. Wait, did she break up with you?"

"No, it was my idea. When something like this happens, you start to... " He gave himself a quick, short shake. "It was time."

"Okay. Consider my mind blown. Storm has a bed buddy, you broke up with Kitty, the Simpsons are still on. Do we hate her? I can hate her."

"No, Marie, we don't hate Kitty. We wish her well in all her endeavours."

"Okay. We don't hate Kitty and you're single while I'm doing shit-all to find your missing baby sister. Why are you still talking to me instead of in the bottom of a vodka bottle?"

"Real vodka's too expensive on an artist-slash-construction worker's salary. Mom raised me too well to drink anything else."

"Snob." Marie lunged across the bed to hug Pete, squeezing around his massive chest as hard as she could. Slowly, his hands came up to return the embrace. "Life sucks," she said.

"It does. But it'll get better. You'll help it get better. I know you will."

* * *

She had braced herself for the fallout of her move to the third floor. Long-time residents like Stacey and Gemini were sure to have something to say about it. They might even declare an old fashioned throw down. Marie had no intention of losing a fight but she couldn't afford to attract any more attention than she already did by being Semyonov's apparent favourite. Too much attention got undercover cops killed.

Marie walked into the main floor, tensed for a fight. Instead of a confrontation, she found a brunch party with one Remy Fucking Lebeau smack-dab in the middle. She suspected that was his real middle name. It was more appropriate than Etienne. What the fuck did Etienne mean any way? Nothing. Now, "Fucking"-- _that_ had meaning which suited the man well in all its connotations. After nineteen-- wait, no, twenty months, two weeks, and four days of knowing Remy Etienne Lebeau, Marie thought nothing he did could surprise her. She hated being wrong, especially about Lebeau. Being wrong about Lebeau was hazardous to her health.

A second-floor girl clung to each of Lebeau's arms. Another sat on an ottoman in front of him. The same ottoman and a couple side tables had been recruited to hold the food: eggs benedict smothered in hollandaise sauce, waffles piled high with fruit and real whipped cream, crisply curled bacon, cheesy grits, a mountain of potato and yam hashbrowns, grilled tomatoes and peppers, and spicy sausages. On the bar, a tank each of coffee, hot chocolate, and tea waited. Beside them, a glass punch bowl held orange juice with oranges, grapefruit, and lime slices swimming in ice. The piece de resistance, however, was the three-foot tall, hookah-like bong in the middle of the dance floor. Security was nowhere to be found.

Lebeau winked at her. "Mornin', sleepyhead." His arm ornaments giggled on cue.

"What's going on?" Marie asked, her wariness all too real.

"Well, if it ain't the favourite," drawled Stacey. "Not getting too comfy in your new place?"

"No one told me about a party."

"Maybe if you weren't busy looking for ways to get into the big house, you'd've heard."

Marie waited, knowing Stacey wanted to boast about this.

"If she's in the big house, maybe we shouldn't tell her," said Tinkerbell-Leafgirl. "She could tell on us."

Suddenly, the metaphorical temperature in the room dropped. Marie found herself the target of a half dozen baleful glares. Gemini even started cracking her knuckles, all forty of them.

"There you are, sweetheart." Lebeau sat up as he spoke. All trace of his Southern accent was gone, replaced by something vaguely Midwestern. "Breakfast is served."

"Love to but I'm watching my figure," said Marie. "You bought the whole Genie for an hour?"

"Extending a hand of friendship," said Lebeau in that damned unfamiliar accent. "Made friends with a few of the girls. I noticed a distinct difference between what they charged me and what you get and, frankly, darling, I think it's unfair, as you know."

"Really."

"Absolutely. Now I was just telling the girls that you and me know people who can help you all be in charge of yourselves. Become a home business, if you will, instead of having to fork over more than half the fees to your current bosses."

Stacey snarled at Marie. "I thought you were sucking up to Max and Stefan's boss for a sure thing when you already have something going. Bitch is just greedy."

Marie snarled back. "Bitch, you're just hating 'cause you didn't think of it first. Or maybe you did but you weren't good enough to be interesting."

"Fuck no, you didn't." Stacey rose, fingers curled into claws.

Lebeau jumped between them. "Ladies, we can't afford to be heard, remember. Give me a few minutes to talk with our mutual friend. Meantime, why don't you all enjoy the rest of breakfast."

The others thought she was going to service Lebeau. That ought to make her even more unpopular than ever with Stacey and her cohorts. Lebeau allowed Marie to lead him to her room on the second floor. She looped her riding crop through his belt and his hand lightly ringed around her wrist. His thumb caressed her palm, right at the crease where the flesh of her thumb met the rest of her hand. She felt the touch through the glove.

Upon reaching her room, Marie pushed Lebeau on the bed. She backed into the door to close it. As soon as she got the door locked, she whirled around and demanded, "What the actual fuck, Lebeau?! You're supposed to be undercover, too."

"I am," he said. "I told them to call me Gambit. And no more chin pubes, per your request."

"Yeah, great fucking disguise. I thought you were supposed to be the most clandestine character in a urban rumour of a gang. This isn't clandestine at all."

"You remember why we're called The Guild, hein?" Without waiting for an answer, Lebeau said, "Thieves, Assassins, Dealers, Hookers, pooling our skills and income 'cause helping other out makes for more money. That's the Guild. Setting girls up in this place, encouraging a hierarchy-- Ol' Max and Stefan's already done half my job for me."

"A Hooker Guild?"

"Used to be the Pimp Guild. Didn't like that, me."

"Of course. Wouldn't want competition. Don't worry, Lebeau, there ain't a pimp hat big enough to fit your ego."

"Hookers give us a cut of their money, Assassins protect them from abusive johns and other gangs, Dealers get them candy and other goodies, Thieves fake them any paperwork they need. If anyone wants out, they can join the other sub-Guilds, no questions ask. It's all about teamwork."

"And me without my pompoms," said Marie. "So much for the concerned private citizen helping take down a killer."

"Au contraire, _sha,_ I do and have helped. Greenback told me--"

"Greenback?"

"Pretty little thing. Svelte. Down the hall from your old room. Has leaves instead of hair. Handy for pretending to be a potted plant. She told me your friends, Max and Stefan, are planning another Genie type business in Manhattan. Apparently, Stefan talks a lot during sex."

"You couldn't shut the man up with superglue," said Marie. At Remy's side-ways look, she said, "Oh, get your mind out of the gutter. I've just gotten damn good with a riding crop."

"You're a natural, I'm sure. You know what type of properties in Manhattan have enough room between neighbours to build something like this?"

A light went on in Marie's head. "Waterfront properties. All the bodies were processed somewhere then dumped in the water. "

"Gold star, _sha._ Now if they were as smart as me, they'd use property that's been in the Vostochevskaya's hands for at least a year but no longer than five. After five, it starts developing a trail. I'd be looking for evidence of any high demand businesses with a waterfront address."

Marie shook her head, amazed despite herself. "You did all of that just to get information?"

Lebeau grinned. "Of course not. I wasn't lying when I said I wanted in on this territory. This place can make up to a million dollars a night, excluding costs, if they play it right. Hits and heists might be sexy but deals and sex are the steadiest income."

"Just like that, you continue to destroy any faith I have in humanity."

"The girls'll be better off with us. Trust me."

Marie snorted. "They'll still be selling their bodies."

"But they'll be well compensated and protected. And I guarantee, ain't no minors gonna be doing this in any Guild house."

Marie rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. "Know what I'm doing? Playing the world's smallest violin for your thief with a heart of gold act."

" _Sha,_ you go on being mean to me, we might not be friends anymore."

"I wasn't aware we were ever friends."

"Sure we are. Don't know anyone else who enjoys obscure B-list foreign films much as I do. Last date I had fell asleep in the middle of _Chocolat _."__

"That doesn't mean any-- really? _Chocolat?_ That movie kicked ass."

"That's what I'm saying."

Marie flapped her hand to push the tangential conversation away. "How do you know one of the girls won't narc you out to Max or Stefan?"

"First of all, one of the girls lived savvy enough to hear of the Guild. She's got all sorts of boogie stories that'll keep them in line. For another, I may have told the lovely lady downstairs that we're both working for the Guild."

"I... _what_?"

Lebeau sat back, folding his arms behind his head. "I told them you were here to scope out the place which is true."

"I'm just not doing it for you! If word of this goes back to MacTac." Marie rubbed her temples with both index fingers.

"You're in disguise. You got nothing to worry about."

"You might not think so but I'm already walking too fine a line. Between playing up Semyonov's nostalgia and skipping a few grades to get to the second floor, I'm already in the spotlight all the damn time, not only with Max and Stefan but the rest of the workers. If any of them thought they could get a better life by making me fall, they'd do it and I wouldn't blame them." She dropped onto the bed to his left. "So now, not only am I the Big Boss' favourite _and_ the uppity bitch who manipulated her way to the third floor, I'm also from a rival gang. Can you understand the position you've put me in?"

Lebeau stared at his hands. "You... may have a point."

"If you wanted to do something like this, at the very least you could've warned me."

"Would you have agreed?"

"Hell no! But at least I could've changed my M.O. for the rest of the op."

"I'm... I'm sorry, _sha_ , I talk shit but I'd never want to really endanger you, y'know that."

He sounded so forlorn, Marie couldn't help but pat his leg. "My life's always been endangered, sugar. You just make it a bit more challenging."

He covered her hand with his own. "Can I ask you a personal question then?"

"You ain't ever asked permission before," she drawled.

"I'm still in the doghouse. It'd suit me to be a bit more polite."

"Natch. Ask away."

"Why do you _do_ this? A cop's life is tough. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be able to buy them so easy. Being a mutant cop, working to protect our people on the one hand and busting them on the other-- that's gotta be ten times as hard."

"And half the pay," Marie joked. "But hey, I get a nifty gold-plated pin after ten years."

"So why do you do it?"

"I collect cheap pins."

Lebeau squeezed her hand. "C'mon, now."

Marie tried to look him in the eye but his expression was just so... it was so... something about it made her throat feel thick so she focussed on the imperfections of his right hand instead. Old burn scars streaked all the way down to his wrists. His pinkie nail had a deep dent and a dead spot blackened a third of his middle finger. Nicks and scratches criss-crossed his fingers and the back of his hand, one of them deep enough to pit the calluses on the side of his thumb. He had twenty years on her and only his hands showed any sign of it.

"I just can't imagine doing anything else," she said, surprised by her honesty. "It makes me..."

"Happy? Proud?" he filled in when she didn't continue.

"Constant happiness is too high to aim for in this line of work. And sometimes, yeah, I'm proud of myself but mostly I'm proud of everything to do with MacTac. I guess... I guess I'm content. I could do this forever. I _want_ to do this forever."

"Guess you wouldn't've been the kind of girl who wanted to brush long-haired ponies."

"Nah, I still want a pony. Gotta see if I can train to ride the horses for parades."

Lebeau chuckled. "You are one fine piece of work. And, again, I'm real sorry I made things challenging."

"I've learned to expect that from you. But if you're feeling guilty, I've just come up with a way for you to make it up to me. How are you with secret passages?"


	8. Chapter 8

Marie's brain bled from too much tiny information. The transcripts thin plastic sheets Pete had given her seemed to come from the hidden room for the most part. It probably had the best acoustics. There were only two speakers per conversation, likely Stefan and Max, but it was hard to tell without actually listening to the audio herself. The conversation was likely further stilted by Pete's translation. Not for the first or last time, she wished she had a more covert mutation like invisibility. Seeing perps work in action while undercover told her a lot but the ability to attach the bugged conversation to the faces would help so much more. It wouldn't have hurt for the unit to have some close-circuit cameras either but the budget couldn't stretch that far, not even for the older, bulkier models. In the fight between manpower and tech, manpower won by a slim margin. All for the best, Marie thought in general. 

There was a lot of business talk: transferring money from the Genie to fronts and the best way to divide the money between those businesses. They also seemed to process some drug money at this location; the conversation occasionally referred to parcels needing to be hidden. But neither the home team nor Marie could figure out a pattern to the percentage of drug money coming through nor the days when they were processed. The Genie's money seemed to stay in its own chunk. MacTac highlighted a short dialogue about "arming up." Marie spared a thought to telling Lebeau about it. Some cops wouldn't bother but she had no intention of policing an outright gang war. Too many innocents got hurt in the crossfire. No, better to take them-- the Guild _and_ Semyonov's syndicate-- through longer, but quieter means.

Marie yawned. God only knew what time it was. Between working her cover and going over notes, sleeping four hours straight was a luxury. The bags under her eyes made her look strung out and she snacked constantly like a dopehead which was a good thing for her cover at least. She was surprised she hadn't had any more power slip-ups.

Perhaps a nap was in order before she tried to be social downstairs. Her stomach grumbled but Marie just didn't have the energy to chew much less walk down two flights of stairs to the kitchen. She'd developed an appreciation for sleep these days. To think she wasted so much time until the past year staying up to watch movies or tacking an extra three miles to her usual five-mile run when she could have been wrapped up in her blankets at bed at home, sleeping. Marie cocooned herself in her skanky satin sheets and was out cold a thought later.

She woke up with Lebeau rubbing her feet which, after all of this, was the least of her worries. "Well?"

"Well, you can't ever say I don't deliver my best work 'cause, dayum, _sha_ , I make good work," said Lebeau. He stood on the bed. Raising his hands, he began tapping the ceiling lightly. "The soundproofing in this place is ridiculous, know that? It's like they're hiding a slaughterhouse in every room. Fortunately, it's also good enough to muffle a hand-held laser cutter going from the roof to the top floor. Here we go." 

His knuckles hit a more solid-sounding spot a foot away from the mirrored wall. He marked it with his fingernail then tapped a concentric pattern around it until he found another solid area which he also notched. Then he took a small device from his pocket that resembled a blunt screwdriver. Flicking a switch on the base, he pointed one end at the first spot he marked. A thin pink light shot out from the device. A scorched plastic smell hit Marie's nostrils as the spot on the ceiling darkened. Lebeau drew a curved line to the other spot then drew the circle to a close by pointing the laser back to the starting point. The circle he drew was two feet in diameter. Lebeau prodded at the edges of the circle until it swung from the rest of the ceiling from a hidden hinge on the other side. Drywall dust showered his hair and shirt.

"What's that?" Marie asked.

"A new door as Mistress Liz requested," said Lebeau. "I like to think of it as a VIP entrance for me and your hulking brute of a boyfriend."

Marie ignored the boyfriend statement in favour of staring up the hole. "You've got some big brass ones, Lebeau."

"Yes ma'am. Been lifting weights all night when everyone else is partying it up. Damn whippersnappers."

"How'd you get it to by-pass the alarms?"

Lebeau threw her an offended look. "Come on, _sha._ Have you met me?"

"Fair enough."

"It's a little dicier once you get out on the roof. You got your choice of sliding down a rain pipe I've reinforced to stick better to the wall, or hoping the dumpster on the side is closed. The dumpster's more street side; less likely they'll come out in full force to stop you. The rain pipe leads to the back yard so if you don't get scraped making a jump, you definitely will fighting off a bouncer or three."

Marie nodded but pursed her lips. "That's your clean getaway? Gotta admit, I expected something a little more buffed from the great Gambit."

"More buffed? This is fucking sparkling, _sha._ Not my fault you and the Hulk over there ain't agile enough to parkour."

"Are you even allowed to parkour at your age? Don't they take away your cred once you need a walker?"

Lebeau narrowed his eyes at her, both playful and serious. "I get finer with age."

"I left that one wide open."

"You surely did."

"So from in here, you can jump down. How do you get in from outside presuming the dumpster isn't in the perfect place? And by _you_ I mean Pete."

"Any which way you can. Look, it's gotta blend in. I can't be making too many changes or they'll guess something's up. Ol' Max, he don't seem to dip in the company bong, if y'know what I mean. He's clear minded enough to spot major adjustments. If your Pete can't figure something like this out, maybe he ain't the right guy to do this op."

"I'm sure Pete can figure it out fine," Marie said through clenched teeth. She opened her mouth to question him some more but Logan's senses caught someone slowing down at her door. She shooed Lebeau away. Time to put that exit to good use. He lifted himself up and closed the trapdoor just as the doorknob turned.

Tank, one of the bouncers, stuck his head in. "Dress up and come with me. Mr. Semyonov wants you."

"Sure thing, hon. Give a girl a second to put on some pants."

"What do you care if someone looks at you?"

"You ain't paying, are you? Give me five fucking minutes."

Tank rolled his eyes but closed the door. Marie grabbed the only pair of jeans Mistress Liz owned and topped it with a dress shirt left by one of her customers. So much for processing evidence from that particular douchenozzle. Thankfully, she hadn't gotten around to putting on make-up so she didn't have to scrub anything off to look marginally innocent. Giving the ceiling hatch one last peek-- sealed and invisible-- Marie exited her room.

Semyonov's bodyguard led her straight from the Genie to the car to the music room. The old man sat on one of the chairs pressed up against the wall. "Close the door," he told the bodyguard. To Marie, he said, "Play me something."

Marie took her place on the piano bench. Holding her breath, she concentrated on keeping Liz's disguise on while sieving out Pete's piano-playing memories. Good thing she wore a long-sleeved shirt and had her back to Semyonov.

"You are not an excellent player," said the old man.

"Sorry. I couldn't continue my lessons."

"Why not?"

Marie shrugged. He could glean why. And if he couldn't, his mind was slipping more than Lebeau knew.

"My Aleksandra was an exemplary player. But you knew that already."

"I wish I could be as good."

"You need passion. You play but keep yourself separate from the instrument. You play it but are not one with it."

"Sorry."

"Mikhail played with passion. Not much skill but he felt music to his core." Semyonov pressed a fist to his belly. "There is artistry in our blood. Passion. But always tempered with this." He tapped his forehead. "Always think on your passions, not let them rule it, yes?"

"That sounds smart." She swayed a little more with the music but too much drama disrupted her connection to Pete's memories. Despite his ramblings, Semyonov wasn't as senile as Max thought-- as Max hoped. He always had at least one guard in the room with them and another outside. She was never left alone with him. His fixation with the past was centred on this room anyway; she doubted she'd be able to influence him as much with her little lost lamb performance if he wasn't surrounded by memories of Aleksandra. She needed a way around this little hiccup. Maybe Max _was_ the way to go--

The outside bodyguard entered to whisper something in Semyonov's ear. The old man's eyes narrowed.

"Handle it," he said in Russian. Marie thanked her lucky stars that she was in Pete's head at the moment and thus able to translate.

"It might be better if you were away from the windows for now," the bodyguard suggested in the same language.

"Very well. Someone stay with her. This better not take long." He stood. Marie followed. "Sit," he said.

_Woof,_ Marie replied mentally.

"I will be a moment," Semyonov continued. "John will be outside to ensure your safety, my dear."

Marie smiled beatifically. "Whatever you say, _dyadya,_ "

She waited until the door closed before darting to the windows. Latched from the inside, seven feet from the floor, easy enough to convince the rusted lock open with Magneto's powers. She ran the risk of being caught without her Liz disguise but it couldn't be helped. Two bar hinges-- one at the top of the window, and one at the bottom-- kept them from opening wider than a foot. Marie magnetically unscrewed the hinges. A quick run through Lebeau's memories drew her attention to laser sensors running across the ledge. Opening the windows could sound an alert. She scanned the music room. There had to be at least one mirror in this-- 

A mirrored picture frame on the mantle glinted. Excellent. Marie accessed Pete's organic-metal strength to snap the frame into four pieces. Now she had to rely on her own excellent billiards skills. She drove one pointed glass shard into the bottom sill, angled down to the right. Then she rode the magnetic fields to reach the top of the window where the laser sensor originated. She had to position the next mirror just right before driving it in...

Perfect. 

The window swung open. No alarms. Rust and white paint flaked to the floor. Shimmying halfway out, Marie sat on the window sill. By her estimate, Semyonov's office was the next window over. It looked the same as this one, so probably same hinges and security devices. She could just use Magneto's powers again to fly over and manipulate any iron-based components of the laser sensor but that required having him in the forefront of her mind. She hated the feeling of his psyche. All that hate, twisted all around in cold logic. It felt like swimming in dry ice. Going full Magneto was a last-ditch plan.

A four-inch decorative ledge ran above all the windows on this floor. No luck having matching ledges below them to make climbing around easier but each window did have outcropping brick elements as a bottom detail. Sure three feet separated each window but Marie still had a few tricks in Sauron's bag. She drew further from his powers. Her skin darkened, her scales roughened, her nails thickened and elongated into claws. 

Marie stood up on the sill and drove the claws of her right hand into the decorative ledge. Stretching to the left as far as possible, she did the same with her left hand, keeping the majority of her weight pressed against the windows. So far, so good. The claws helped her grip and her weight distribution, thanks to bits of Lebeau's memory, held her upright. But at some point, she would have to let go.

_Please, let this work._ Marie retracted the claws of her right hand only to shift her arm a few inches closer to midline, and grab onto the ledge again. Still okay. She let go the left, shifted, and grabbed, sliding her body along the building. _Yes. I live_

But the window to the office looked miles away and she had ten minutes max to do this. Time to nut up and go double-time. Let go, stretch across, dig in, balance. Over and over, keeping her weight on her chest as long as possible. For three heart-clenching stretches, Marie hung only by her claws and upper arm strength.

_As soon as I get out of this op, I'm taking up rock-climbing._

She swung right in front of Semyonov's office. She lowered her right hand to grab the bricks lining one side of the window, gripped the wrought-iron sash with her left and let her feet slide down to the window ledge. So far, safe. A cursory glance inside confirmed her theory: this window had laser sensors, too, and a sliding lock that was painted over. She'd have to access Magneto's powers but at least not for long.

Off went the hinges. Disrupting the laser sensor took a bit longer but she only had to hold it for as long as it took her to slip into the office. She landed feet first behind a sway-backed chair. Semyonov's desk lay to her left, the computer humming in hibernation mode. Semyonov's bodyguards frisked almost as well as airport security but they still underestimated women. And women's underthings. Marie ducked under the table. Whipping the CPU's cover away magnetically, she dug into the padding pocket of her bra for the computer bug Pete gave her. After a few seconds of hunting, she attached the bugs to the harddrive wiring. 

She headed for the window again but a sheaf of papers caught her attention. They barely stuck out of a manila file, sitting right in the middle of Semyonov's desk. The wall clock chimed the hour. Logan's hearing found four enforcers duking it out with half a dozen rival gangsters on the ground floor. Another three mafiya members were somewhere on the third floor, possibly including Semyonov. The number of punches and kicks on the ground floor had decreased; she might have five minutes tops to get back. 

Marie flipped the folder open. Inside were real estate ads profiles, four of them in the Manhattan area. She committed the addresses to memory, hoped her memory retained the information, and whisked back out the window to the music room with plenty of time to look sweet and innocent again.

"Did you take care of things, _dyadya_?" she asked when Semyonov returned.

He nodded. "It is time for you to go now."

She couldn't wait.

* * *

Over the past three hours, Marie had watched Stacey circle her, like a cat contemplating an attack on a particularly fiendish mouse. Marie had no idea what the other woman wanted and even less patience to work it out right now. So she let Stacey circle. She had a riding crop and she knew how to use it as a weapon. She was _really_ good at using it as a weapon.

Stacey finally cornered her when their customers happened to leave at the same time. She dragged Marie into her room and shut the door. Marie tightened her hold on her crop and steadied into a fighting stance.

"Are you legit?" Stacey demanded.

Marie hadn't expected _this_. "What are you talking about?"

"Gambit said you were scoping this place out for him. Is that true?"

Marie clenched the whip even tighter. "Gambit says a lot of things."

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Stacey backed away. "Whatever. It's all bullshit anyway. Who cares who's in charge, we're all still fucking tools to them. They don't give a shit as long as we rake in the cash, right?"

Well, that was unusually bitter, even for Stacey X. "What else did Gambit tell you?"

"Some bull about giving us power and keeping the kids out. Like, really? The younger they are, the more they bring in. No one'd really do that."

"Kid? Which kid?"

Stacey sent her a sidelong glance. "Angel."

Marie's heart rate tripled. She thought she was the only one who'd guessed. Or cared. "The one with the dragonfly wings?"

"Yeah. Nineteen, my ass. She can't be any older than sixteen; probably more like fourteen without all that make-up. If you and Gambit were for real, you'd've seen that already, so, y'know, whatever."

"I did see," said Marie. "But I didn't tell anyone 'cause I didn't know who to trust with yet. Are you saying you'll help?"

Stacey chewed on her thumbnail. "I was thirteen when someone first tried to fuck the mutie out of me."

Nausea threatened Marie' tough-girl image. She tamped the urge to vomit down. Instead, she crossed her arms and leaned back on the door, waiting for Stacey to keep talking. The other woman had become quiet, seemingly concentrating on chewing on her nails.

"Can you get her out of here?" Stacey finally burst out.

"Can you help?" Marie asked in turn.

"I can't..." Stacey growled in frustration. "I don't know how."

"You don't have to come up with how. You just have to be part of the plan. I've been trying to figure out a way to smuggle her out, too, but it's damn hard to do it alone."

"Won't Gambit help?"

"It depends on the plan. Which we can't make unless we know how much help we can get." Marie crossed her fingers and hoped she wasn't making a promise she couldn't keep. Fuck Lebeau and his big mouth anyway. "So, are you in or are you out?"

Stacey stared at her, her forefinger back in her mouth, chewing away. Finally, she straightened and spat. "I'm in."

* * *

Another night, another visit from the outside world. Pete came by more often now thanks to the trap door but Marie dreaded them more. She wanted to have something better to tell him besides "We're working on it." Even the addresses from Semyonov's desk, exciting at the time, were another version of "We're working on it."

"The HQ's working on those addresses but they need to streamline the stake-outs. Which ones do you think are the most likely places?" he asked.

"I'm thinking the Marlboro one since it's waterfront property but Rothmans is closer to the clubs."

"I'll pass that on." Pete handed her a short information sheet. "I've marked an interesting section."

" _You_ marked it?" Marie's eyebrow arched up. "Mighty presumptuous of you, considering this is still a police investigation, not an X-Men one."

"My sister's life is on the line. If I have to go to jail for reading your notes, then so be it. I need to know."

"If I thought anything was going to happen to Illyana, I'd let tell you. You know that, right?"

Pete didn't answer for a second. Something that might have been doubt niggled the back of Marie's head. "Of course I know it," said Pete. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't have kept it from you though, _you_ know _that_ , right?"

"Yeah, sure I do," Marie hurried to add. "And really, I'd like your input. Sometimes, I need a different point of view, something not so cop-like and more... more..."

"More artist by day, vigilante by night?" Pete's lips quirked up.

"Don't go swinging through the roofs yet, Batman. We need to get the whole picture."

"If I'm Batman, does that mean you're Robin?"

"I take it back. If anyone's Batman, it's me."

"I don't think Batman wore corsets."

"What do you think stopped all those bullets? All that whalebone, sugar. Besides, you've got the legs for booty shorts." She smacked his thighs, laughing at the pink that spread through his cheeks. Pete might have been dressing like a thug for this op, but he couldn't stop being Pete. "All right, what's this interesting part you're talking about?"

Pete pointed to a section marked with a red line on the margin. "Look at this conversation. One of the men, I think it's Max, asks about 'our little parcel.' In the next line, Stefan goes yeah, yeah, the little parcel's fine, it's not going anywhere. There's a pause. They're shuffling papers in the background. Here, now read the rest of the conversation."

> S: He's not acting the way we want.  
>  M: Patience.  
>  S: You know I'm no good with patience. The little parcel's been gone for weeks now and he shows no sign of retrieving her--

Marie looked up from her reading. "Stefan said her specifically? Not 'him' or 'it?'"

Pete shook his head. "He used 'she.' Russian's pretty specific about gendered nouns."

Marie kept reading.

> S: You know I'm no good with patience. The little parcel's been gone for weeks now and he shows no sign of retrieving her.  
>  M: Patience. You've seen him with the snake girl.  
>  S: Fucking sad. [pause] He might get a piece of the parcel soon if he does not bend.  
>  M: Perhaps. 

Marie continued to read past the red-marked line but the conversation changed back to accounting. "This talk about a parcel is pretty vague. If they're talking about Illyana, why are they hiding her instead of using her here? We don't know who 'he' is, either. This might be two different cases-- one for the killer, one for the slave ring."

Pete's forehead wrinkled as he swallowed. He twisted his fingers around each other.

"Pete?"

"You... from what you've observed, Max wants control of the mafiya."

"Yeah, so?"

"What if they have someone Semyonov cares for?"

"You think Semyonov cares about Illyana?"

"No!" Pete reddened. "This... this conversation doesn't have anything to do with Yana but it does point towards kidnapping and assault. Is that enough for a hard conviction?"

"Maybe. Present it to HQ and see what they think. My gut says the murdering bastard who has Illyana is tied to this place and if we come in too soon, we might never find her.

"Do you know who Rasputin was?" asked Pete.

"Lover of the Russian queen?" Marie answered. "Rah, rah."

"Despite the popularity of disco, no. He was a Russian Orthodox monk and a self-proclaimed mystic. They were popular in the early twentieth century, like gurus in the seventies or Apple computers in early 2K." Pete rubbed the bit of residue from his finger off a tablet he'd brought to sort through surveillance images. "The tsar and tsarina-- the king and queen of Russia-- had four girls and one son. That son, the heir to the throne, had haemophilia, which was pretty much a death sentence in those days. Rasputin managed to convince the tsar and tsarina that only he could cure the prince. The royal family basically bankrupted the country paying for Rasputin's lifestyle and his supposed remedies. It was one factor in the Russian Revolution which would eventually led to Communist USSR and the Cold War."

"Wow. So all those decades of grief because a dickhole took advantage of rich, desperate, and powerful people."

"I never thought of it that way."

"What then?"

"As decades of grief because one family loved their child so much. I'd destroy the world if it meant Yana would be safe."

The hairs on Marie's arms rose. She wanted to blame Pete's monologue on artistic temperament but there was a bright look to his eyes, a desperation she'd learned to recognize after six and a half years as a cop. She saw that look down the barrel of her gun when she knew she'd have to fire it and aim for the squishy parts. The last time she saw that expression on her own face was as a reflection in the window as the first train out of Westchester County pulled away, positive she had no place in the world after even Xavier's School kicked her out for using her powers on Logan.

* * *

Tonight was Gemini's big night. Angel's too but she didn't know it yet. Marie stared up at the covered escape hatch on her ceiling and crossed her fingers. Of all the stupid nights to have a full moon, it _would_ be tonight. Cops, firefighters, and nurses became real superstitious, even the ones who'd never given half a thought to black cats or religion. They-- _she,_ Marie mentally corrected herself with chagrin-- needed to exert some kind of control or pattern to the chaos of their everyday life.

Marie twisted her hair into a tight top knot. She wore the head -to-toe PVC tonight; she didn't need the added distraction of wondering who her skin might touch. Downstairs, one of the girls worked through a Top 40 playlist on a computer. No need for anything too edgy here. The workers just needed something to dance to, and the johns, something to fill in the awkward silence between their sweaty panting.

Marie descended, chin high, snapping her riding crop against her hand. She'd gotten skilful enough to make the whip snap without hurting herself. Two or three heads swivelled in her direction, interested, starting to smile. Marie crossed the dance floor without looking at the others. Instead, she took note of which girls were on the poles: Gemini, Greenbelt, and Stacey. Good. Everything according to plan. She made sure they all saw her as well. Once she crossed the floor, she walked the perimeter, showing herself off for every man there before picking out one of the regulars, Roy or Robby or something, who had Blitzen on his lap. He hadn't liked the D/s game, if she recalled correctly but when they crossed paths, he'd always been unusually polite for a john. Marie caressed his cheek with the tip of her riding crop. That was the signal.

Gemini dove from her pole to Greenbelt's, her face twisted into a snarl. Unfortunately, Greenbelt wasn't in on the plan. Her surprise was genuine as was her sudden return attack. They fell off the small platform, pulling at each other's hair. The men hooted and clapped, perhaps thinking this was part of the entertainment. Even those who suspected a real fight probably didn't care. As security ran in, the rest of the girls on the main floor took sides. Only Stacey remained on her platform. She raised her fist and filled the room with low levels of pheromones. The amount was enough to distract the security guards and the remaining johns to the point where they didn't notice Marie slipping back upstairs.

She ran down the second floor hallway. The guard there, Tank, lowered his eyebrows at her but she pointed down the stairs and said, "They need you to break up a fight. It's pretty bad."

As soon as the top of his head disappeared, Marie headed for the fourth door on the left, the room Angel supposedly worked in. She tried the knob. Locked. She pulled her lockpicks out of her riding crop-- damn she loved that hidden compartment. A couple twists and a thirty seconds later, the door popped open.

Angel was on her hands and knees on a low mattress, hiding her sobs in her arms. Her john had her beautiful, delicate wings crunched up in his fists as he huffed and puffed and jiggled into her from behind. Marie was _not_ looking forward to absorbing that asshole. She might as well get what little satisfaction from it as she could.

When he looked up, Marie bashed him at his right temple with the butt of her whip. The blow was hard enough to momentarily black him out. He fell backwards off the mattress, his pants and underwear tangling around his knees. Pathetic. He wouldn't stay out for long. She should have brought something with more heft like a crowbar. Marie pulled her left glove off and touched his skin.

_Yeah, you little mutie bitch, give it up, give it to me, you fucking cu--_

_\-- not a good fit for where this company is going forward. Security will escort you out just because of policy, you understand, not that we think you're the kind to do anythi--_

_\-- don't get that alimony cheque in by this weekend, I'll sic a lawyer on you! Jesus, you can't even be depended on for something as simple as this. Divorcing you was the best idea I ever--_

Marie pulled away, gagging. She boxed those memories away as quickly as possible. Hopefully, she'd never have to open them again. Stacey would be up here soon to give the guy some happy fun feelings. Marie concentrated on getting Angel upstairs.

"What're you doing?" asked Angel.

"Getting you out of here, sugar." Marie pushed the door open a slit and peered through. Tank was still downstairs. She grabbed Angel with her covered hand. "Come on."

"Wait. What do you mean get me--"

"Don't talk. Just follow me."

"But what about--"

"I said hush!"

She dragged Angel up the second set of stairs to her room. Thankfully, the girl was good at doing as she was told or was just in too much shock to speak any more. The ruckus continued downstairs. The yelling, most prominent of them coming from Gemini-- threatened to overshadow the sound system. All good so far. One more obstacle to overcome before she could get them both into relative safety. There was a guard on the third floor as well. Tonight, it was Basher. Marie had no idea if her powers worked on rock-like skin. She had two seconds to find out as they cleared the last step.

With the fight going on downstairs, Basher already had half an ear towards the stairs. He started at their arrival. "What's going on?"

Marie slung her arm over Angel's shoulder. "Just showing the girl a taste of the good life, sugar."

Basher's frown deepened as he walked towards them. "Not on working hours, girls. Get back in your rooms for the next--"

Marie grabbed Basher's arm. And waited. He stared down at his forearm then back at her. Marie waited a half second more for that breath-snatching, reverse-vacuum feeling and the information overload that came with her powers. Absolutely nothing. Uh-oh.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" asked Basher.

"Just that maybe you should cut us a bit of slack, is all," said Marie. "We're not expecting anyone for a few minutes."

"Nuh-uh. Back." He pointed.

Somewhat desperately, Marie peered around Basher's bulk to find the door to her room. Thing was, Basher wasn't only big, he was wide. He should've taken the name The Wall instead because he looked like a walking, talking piece of a medieval castle wall. There would be no sliding around him, not while lugging Angel. She looked around. Nothing to use as a makeshift weapon.

Angel began to cough. They were big and wet, coming from deep in her diaphragm. Basher drew away, looking disgusted. "Bitch, are you sick? Don't get none of that near me."

Angel shook her head but kept coughing, one of her hands going to her chest. Now even Marie pulled away to get a good look at her. The girl always looked sick but Marie had chalked it up to drug use and late nights. Maybe if she worded things right, she could convince Stefan to bring Angel to a doctor.

Suddenly, Angel pursed her lips and spat right into Basher's face. Basher reflexively covered his face then started screaming. Marie didn't understand why until she smelled something burning. Tendrils of smoke escaped from between Basher's fingers. He kept on screaming, tripping over his own feet, trying to head for the nearest bathroom. Rather, the _only_ bathroom on the first floor. The crash he made as he rolled down the stairs threatened to out-do the fight.

Marie gave Angel an appreciative look. "What was that?"

"Acid saliva," said Angel, a dash of shyness with a bit of pride as well. "I can only do it sometimes."

"Well, you sure made it count! Come on."

They ran to Marie's room where Remy was waiting. Angel gasped and reeled back.

"It's okay," said Marie. "He's here to help."

"But he's a customer," Angel said.

Marie narrowed her eyes at Remy. "I know. But he's still here to help."

Remy's smile held none of his usual smarm, much to Marie's surprise. She rarely saw that expression on him barring memories of his kids and-- she reddened at the realisation-- their movie appointments. "Hey, Angel, right? You got any other names?"

Angel shook her head. "I don't use a slave name."

"Right." To Marie, he said, "I know someone who wants a Magneto tee in their stocking this Christmas."

"I'll let Storm know," said Marie.

Angel's eyes widened even more. "Storm? The X-Man? Or, X-Woman. You _know_ her?"

"I know someone who knows her," said Remy. Which wasn't a total lie. "Want to meet her?"

"For _real?_ " Angel looked so excited her youthfulness was even more apparent, much to Marie's horror. Remy apparently thought so as well. Anger flashed through his face before he evened his temper out.

"Really for real," he said gently. "But first, I want to give you something." He made a gesture in the air. A knife appeared in one hand and a small calibre gun in the other. "Pick one."

"Gambit!" Marie protested.

"No, _sha,_ this one's gone too long feeling helpless. She don't know me from Adam, nor you for that matter. She should have something to protect herself with. I suggest the gun; better range."

"She could always hock a loogie," Marie said. "Look, her having a weapon she doesn't know how to use could be even more dangerous than being unarmed."

"We can argue this back and forth but time's wasting. Now, Angel, knife or gun?" Remy held the weapons out.

Without hesitation, Angel picked the hand gun.

"Fine choice," said Remy. He headed for the escape hole.

Letting out a gruff sigh, Marie quickly ran over handgun basics. "This is a semi-automatic with a six-bullet magazine and a fifty-foot range. This is the safety on. This is the safety off. Keep it on unless you know you're going to use it. Cock this the first time you turn the safety off; after that, just keep pulling the trigger. When you run out of bullet, for the love of God, do _not_ hold the nozzle to pistol-whip anyone unless you're wearing gloves because you're going to give yourself a burn."

"Pulls to the left," Remy added.

"That's the last thing she needs to worry about."

Meanwhile, Remy had scrambled on top of the dresser and pulled himself up through the escape hole. He popped his head back in and held his arms out. "Come up on, _ma tí._ "

"I'll boost you up," said Marie.

"Are you coming?" Angel asked.

Marie shook her head. "I got other work to do before I leave. But I'll be right along sooner or later."

"What'll you tell the others? They'll wonder where I've gone."

"Let me worry about it. But now that you've brought it up." Marie delved into her mind for Logan's powers. "Think you could make a little bit more of that acid spit?"

"What?!"

"It's all right. I heal fast but it would do some good if you could leave some damage around here."

A light went on over Angel's head. "Gotcha." She started coughing and collecting spit into her cheeks.

Remy looked at them both in askance. "Do I want to know?"

"Probably. It's both amazing and disgusting and so right up your movie-watching alley," said Marie.

Angel stuck her tongue out and let loose a vast spray of acid. The bed spread, mirrors, floors-- everything it touched began to sizzle. Marie wrinkled her nose against the acrid smell.

"You're right," said Remy. "I ain't sure if I should clap or wipe my hand with some alcohol gel. Not that we got enough time to do either. Hurry on up."

Angel climbed easily on top of the dresser. Remy caught her by the wrists and, with Marie lifting from below, hauled her up the escape hatch. Marie slid the cover back in place. It settled, seamless. She let out another heaving breath, sinking onto the burn-speckled bed. One person saved. Two dozen more to go.


	9. Chapter 9

Good thing Pete was scheduled to come in tonight. She desperately needed an update on all those transmissions. By this time, the boys down in MacTac had probably come to same conclusion about possible secondary and tertiary locations for Vostochevskaya's major monetary strongholds but they could better triangulate the digital payments with cash from outside. Such was life in the digital age; the police knew how to hack bank accounts, too. 

When she arrived downstairs, she found Pete seated at the bar with a couple of Max's underlings. Marie had never seen Pete look so... well, so much like a douchebag fratboy. His hair was styled, for one: shiny and somewhat stiff with product. His clothes were a little too tight, with his chest a little too bare. And was that a pinky ring on his right hand? He and the underlings each had a girl on their lap and a shot glass in their hand. A bottle of something clear and unlabelled stood, opened, on the bar. Going by the frequent uproars of laughter, they were having themselves a grand old time. 

Marie tapped Pete's shoulder with her riding crop. He turned, as did his new friends. With a grin that couldn't be described as anything but smarmy, Pete leaned towards to bar and shot off something in a drawling Russian before Marie could switch brains to translate. Whatever he said had the other two gangsters howling with laughter.

She put her hands on his hips, her annoyance not entirely faked. "I do have better fish to fry, little man."

Raising his glass, Pete said, "I'll see you later. Keep her warm for me." He pushed his girl off his lap, gently, but still a push.

Marie turned on her heel and marched upstairs. She didn't look at Pete again until they reached her room. Pete settled into his usual place on the bed. He had his blank expression on again which revealed more than a frown ever could but suspicion still nagged at the back of Marie's head.

"You were awful chummy," she said.

"I'm blending in. I get more information if they think I'm a countryman instead of an Americanised Rus."

"I thought your accent gave you away."

He shrugged. "When I'm surrounded by native speakers, I get better."

He sure did. "So, International Man of Mystery, what story did you give them?" asked Marie.

"I'm here via London where my family moved when I was ten which explains my accent. I work as a longshoreman, same as in England. I like to work hard and play hard. Everything they wanted to hear." Pete expression twisted slightly. "I think they might be trying to recruit me. Should I accept?"

"You're asking me?"

"Of course. You're in charge of this op."

"I don't know, Pete, you seem to be doing a lot of things independently."

His forehead furrowed. "Are you angry? I thought you'd be pleased that I was taking initiative and gathering as much information as possible."

"You're a contact not an operative," Marie snapped.

"And you chose me to be a contact because I've had previous experience as an operative," Pete retorted. "So tell me what you're really angry about."

Marie rubbed her eyes. "I don't know. Forget it. I'm just tired. I need to finish this op before I lose all faith in humanity."

Gently, he took her hands and just held them. Pete topped six-and-a-half feet. His hands were the size of dinner plates. Her own hands disappeared between his fingers. He could crush them even without the use of his powers and for the longest time, Marie had admired how he used them to create instead. 

"You _will_ solve this," he said. "I know you, Marie. You're stubborn, brave, foolhardy, smart, you never look before you leap, and when you hit an obstacle, you throw everything you've got from every angle until the obstacle falls down. And do you know why?"

"Because I'm too stupid to stop hitting my head against a brick wall?"

"Because you care about other people so much," Pete corrected. "Sometimes I think that's where you power hurts you the most. You can see all sides of the argument because you can literally see what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes. You want to make the world better because you can't stand to see anyone suffering. And you pretend to be a bitch because otherwise, you think you'll fall apart."

Marie folded her lips between her teeth and bit them hard enough to hurt. "You always make my crazy seem like a good thing."

"That's because it is." He grimaced. "But because we _are_ timed and I'm supposed to be doing my job, I have an important piece of information to pass on to you."

"What is it?" she asked him.

"There was a video of Illyana in Semyonov's harddrive."

"What?!" She hadn't pegged Semyonov as the type of scum that was into kids and she was rarely wrong. But if Pete found the video... Dammit. _Dammit!_ She missed something. Something important. She felt it, like a hole left in her gums after getting a tooth kicked out.

He nodded, his jaw and the muscles on his temples stiffening. "She's in a small, dark room. There seemed to be a bed of sorts in the background, a lighter rectangular object."

"Was there audio? Or a date stamp?"

"No date stamp. The audio is muffled but we're working on it." Suddenly, Pete went completely metallic. "We're so close! What's stopping us from tearing Yana's whereabouts from those... those... "

"Legal procedures. Ethics." Marie placed a hand on his metallic arm. "We might skirt the line, Pete, but we're not like them. We won't use violence to get what we want."

"They hurt Illyana!"

"And they're going to pay for it," she said. "But not like this. Now calm down. You can't help Illyana by being all 'roid rage-y."

Pete sat, pressing his fists against his thighs. One square inch at a time, he reverted to flesh. 

"I've combed every inch of the place." _And what I couldn't, Lebeau did,_ Marie mentally added. "They must have a second property, maybe more, where they're hiding any other kidnappees. Here's a list of the likeliest places in order of importance. Tell HQ to stake as many of them out as possible." She fished a much-scribbled-upon take-out menu out from under her mattress.

He took the list and folded it into his jacket pocket. "I was talking to those men to see if they might let anything slip. Russians can be quite boastful after a few bottles of vodka."

"Not you?"

"I don't think I can get drunk. Part of the mutation. Transforming into steel speeds up my metabolism immensely."

"Well, that explains the slabs of muscle under your zero percent body fat," Marie muttered. 

Pete blushed. She would have counted on that reaction to her comment as recently as a week ago but she was so unsure of everyone these days. "Look, while you're here, maybe I can listen in on some private conversations. Max and Stefan sometimes use the noise of the party to do the accounting."

He nodded and placed himself in front of the door. All the better to act as a barricade. Marie sat on the bed and poured all her energy into accessing all of Logan's powers. She winced as she felt her body shifting out of Sauron's shape. It felt like stretching a cramp out. 

First, the odours and noises bombarded her, tipping her backwards on the bed with her hands to her ears. She noticed Pete as a giant block of ozone and pennies creaking over her. The speakers threatened to vibrate her spine right out of her backbone. Slowly, she hauled the sensed back, little by little, ignoring everything but two square inches at a time starting from a point on her bed. 

She moved on to each bedroom on the third floor. Stacey filed her nails as her john gagged on his own spit, too orgasmic to care. Gemini whispered all sorts of highly improbable things. Marilyn's high pitched voice egged her john on. Marie moved downstairs. Same scene on the second floor. And on the main floor. 

On a whim, she expanded Logan's senses even further, out to the Genie's grounds. Suddenly, Marie caught the scent of blood. A lot of blood. Sobbing and stifled thrashing. The tinny sound of metal against something softer, rubber or cloth or a body--

"Dumpster, two houses down, in the alley," she hissed, grabbing Pete's arm.

He boosted her up into the attic exit then jumped up after her. It was a strain to move quietly and quickly over the rafters and out the skylight. They didn't have time to shimmy down the rain pipe and the dumpster was too close to the entrance today. The bouncers would hear their landing for sure. Pete took one look over the ground, then back over his shoulder at her.

"I'll catch you," he said.

She nodded.

Shifting to metal, he leaped. As soon as his feet brushed the ground, he rolled on a shoulder, and came up, only slightly unbalanced. Transformed back into flesh, he waved Marie down. She jumped into his arms and they both rolled away to transfer the weight.

The sobbing was gone now. There were no sounds at all, nothing outside of normal city noise. But the scent of blood remained on her nose. More, spreading over the sour stench of household garbage. She ran faster. She let Magneto loose and flew, propelled by the earth's magnetic fields and the old terrorist's righteous indignation against all who dared hurt his people.

They passed a cloven hoof attached to a delicate human ankle and nothing else. Marie swallowed her vomit back down.

The dumpster was closed. She tracked a smear of blood down one side and a grouping of four streaks that could be a handprint, please God. Pete threw the lid open. Deep gouges destroyed her distinctively huge brown eyes, a small hole gaped in the middle of her face, two incisions bled from the top of her head where her ears used to be. Even without her features, even without the hooves and blunt-tipped fingers that didn't even have fingerprints, Marie knew this body used to be Blitzen.

* * *

"We have to call it in," Marie said.

"What?"

"We need to call it in. While the evidence is fresh."

"But there are tracks back to the Genie," said Pete. "If they raid it, they could bust up the op. Illyana--"

Marie pulled the wire off Pete's shirt. "Calling all units. Homicide at Ocean and Avenue K. Primary MacTac--"

Pete snatched the mic back. "What about Illyana?"

"Illyana's still alive--"

"How do you know?"

"-- and if we don't gather this information, we won't be able to get to her in time either."

Pete stepped back. His face blanked out.

"We need to get back to the Genie," Marie said. She pulled at Pete's wire. "Get rid of that."

"I can't... where--"

"Stuff it down your pants or something."

Pete rolled his eyes at her but obeyed. They ran back even as he was still re-arranging the front of his pants. They reached the back yard as police sirens rang in the distance, too far for the bouncers to be overly cautious. Marie gave them about fifteen minutes to get here, which wasn't a bad response time at all. Leaving Pete to cover her back, she climbed up the rainpipe to the roof. The stupid dominatrix costume was absolute shit for this kind of work. She hoped she wouldn't fall off the roof and die. Or worse, break half the bones in her body and still live. 

Plastering her body against the freezing slate roofing tile, she inched towards the escape hatch. Pete's head popped into view moments later. His shoes had the tread to stand. He opened the hatch then held his hand out for her. Marie accepted and he dragged her in. They were working on unlatching the entrance to Liz's room when the squad cars blared down the street. Marie dropped into the room first. Pete followed yanking the door shut with him.

"Get naked," she ordered. 

Pete whipped his shirt off. He wouldn't have time for the pants. Marie quickly cuffed his hands together at the front. Alibi covered. Sweaty, breathing fast, they looked precisely like a couple going for round two when Basher kicked open the door. 

"You." He pointed to Pete. "Out. Liz, with me."

"What's going on?" Marie asked as Pete pretended to work at his handcuffs.

"Just shut up and come with me."

"My boy--"

"Forget him! We got cops." He dragged her to the next door, kicked it open, and pulled Stacey out as well.

"Who the fuck called the cops?" Stacey demanded. "What're we going to do?"

"You're going to fucking shut up and run, bitch."

Security and hookers streamed down the stairs and out the backdoor that most of the women didn't even know existed. Marie didn't see many second-floor girls; security must have had orders to take the highest paying hookers first: her, Stacey, Gemini, Masque and Greenback although Greenback must have been an afterthought. There was no extracting Marilyn from her room without a crane. They were shoved into a dark-tinted SUV. Basher crawled in behind them. Tank slammed the door to the driver's seat and gunned the pedal as Basher smacked the headrest, growling, "Go, go, go!"

The SUV tilted around a corner. The girls screamed. Marie joined in. Basher whipped his head around.

"Shut up! All of you, shut up. D'you want to be pulled over?"

"If we're going to get pulled over, it's because of Tank's fucknuts driving!" Stacey yelled.

"Yeah," said Greenback and Gemini.

Tank glared at them through the rearview mirror. "Bitch, when we get out of here--"

Stacey flipped him both fingers. "Fuck you. I drag in ten Benjamins a night, dick wad. You better take care of me."

Tank twisted around but Basher clapped him on the shoulder. "Watch the road. And drive careful. Remember the plan."

"What plan?" Marie asked.

Basher handed a water bottle to Masque. "Don't worry about a thing, girls. We won't let the pigs getcha."

They all took sips from the metal bottle. Marie took a small sniff before she had hers. It smelled like a sports drink, strong enough to hide any drugs. If she didn't drink, Basher might use stronger force. Or worse, keep her from the new hiding place. She compromised by taking a sip.

After five minutes, the streetlights swam languidly with every turn. Sounds dulled. Marie groaned inwardly. The drink was spiked, all right. This was a good test of whether or not those addresses she'd Pete were of any importance. If they weren't, she was hooped. Speaking of hoops, the SUV's interior seemed to be spinning around and around and--

* * *

_\--dodged between two fallen buildings. His stolen potatoes bruised his legs straight to the bone but he kept running. He needed to sneak back into the ghetto before the soldiers came or they would take him away, like they took Isaak and Rahel for not wearing their stars--_

_\-- yeah, take my cock, you fucking filthy mutie. On your fucking knees like the whore, you are. Take it, take it, take it--_

_"--de los grandes y algo de cambio. ¿Tú?"_

_"Más o menos lo mismo. Yo--"_

_\--traced the contours of Kitty's hip with his brush. She giggled, tickled, but allowed him to continue. He would paint water lilies on the softness of her thighs, so when she moved, the lilies would bob as though--_

_\--"tired of cleaning up after your goddamn mess, Belle. You funded this... this..."_

_"That's rich coming from you. You're happy enough making seven figures each time you drop by some gangbanger hovel--_

* * *

After what might have been hours, Marie deigned to open one eye. Her vision shook. Her head throbbed. Her mouth tasted like a sewer rat crawled into it to die a week ago. She pulled herself to the edge of something flat and soft that might have been bed to barf down the side of the musty blanket covering the mattress. Benzos. Why did it have to be benzos? Morphs, and roofies never had this effect on her but prescription Xanax messed her up good.

She needed water, needed to clear the drug out of her system ASAP. Sliding one leg over the edge of the bed, Marie tested her steadiness. Her knees wobbled and she fell backwards, barely catching herself on her elbows. One hand slammed against her eye. That was going to leave a mark. She rolled onto her stomach to keep from choking on her own vomit and passed out again.

* * *

_\-- wrapped him in their warmth. The fire was alive. It spoke to him sometimes and sometimes it actually seemed like a language, like those nonverbal dog languages on TV. He cupped both hands around the little flame. It jumped from his right hand to his left, flickering, dancing. He laughed--_

_\--crunched under his fist. Blood splattered. He wiped his lips clean with the back of his hand. The chump got up, too stupid or broke to stay down. Feeling pretty generous thanks to the five hundred already in his pocket and the rye in his gut, he stood back in a defensive position._

_The guy kicked him in the balls. And smiled._

_Now this fight just got persona--_

_\--knotted the ribbon and stepped back. "What d'you think, ma ti?"_

_Laura studied herself in the mirror seriously. She did everything seriously, his little girl did. Eleven going on seventy._

_"It is sufficient."_

_"Sufficient, hein? Pleased t'have met with your approval."_

_Her shoulders twitched. Her fingers trembled just the slightest bit. He could have slapped himself for using that tone of voice with her. After everything she'd been through._

_Crouching down, he took her hands in his. "Ti'La, I ain't angry--_

_\--stared at the blank screen of his email, fingers on the keyboard, unable to type anything past the greeting. What could he say?_

_"Hi Mom & Dad, doing well at Xavier's. I'm getting A's in Trigonometry, Chemistry 1, and Beginner telepathic shielding but I almost failed my last American History test. How's Ronnie doing?"_

_Yeah, that would go--_

_\-- needed to control his temper. Med school made you crazy, everyone knew that. He'd never do it again. He wasn't like that. He'd find some other way to unwind, maybe hit up the racquetball court or take up something new._

_Problem was, he'd texted her this morning and she still hadn't replied. He'd apologized already! He even made plans to change. How were they supposed to stay together if she didn't co-operate? He didn't mean to hit her, never wanted to see her cry, but she always had to be so--_

_"-- worried. Please, don't go out again."_

_Mike turned away. "You don't understand. I'm doing this so Mom doesn't have to be worried any more. We can be rich again, Petey. Do you remember what that was like?"_

_He didn't. But he nodded anyway._

_"I'll be home Monday. Tell Mom... tell Mom something. She always believes--"_

* * *

Marie woke up again. She was still on the floor. The door opened. Someone's feet approached. Someone's knees dropped beside her, with a bottle of water and paper bag smelling of hotdogs with all the works. The scent threatened to pitch the contents of her stomach violently outward.

"Mar--Liz? Try to eat this."

Massive man-paws helped her up to a seated position. Marie's head lolled back and her vision was all wobbly which was probably why she thought it was Pete kneeling beside her with food in a lunch sack.

"I have to go. I... I can explain. Please try to eat."

Not-Pete even sounded like Pete. Smelled like him. Dressed like a thug-life douchebag so it couldn't be Pete. Not her friend. Not him. 

She drank half the water, inhaled the hotdog, and downed the rest of the water before curling up into a ball of hell. She really hated benzos.

* * *

_\--smelled her fear. He stepped between the two of them. "I don't think the lady wants to go with you, bub."_

_The man sneered. "This is not your business, American."_

_"This doesn't have to be a scene. You can walk away now."_

_Five of the man's friends surrounded him. He cracked his neck. If these people wanted a scene, he'd oblige--_

_"-- one more night and we can stop," Mama said._

_"I'm tired of sleeping in the car," said Mikhail._

_"I know, darling, but we'll be finished soon." She turned to him. "How are you, Piotr?"_

_"I'm all right, Mama. Just a little--"_

_\-- wasn't fair! This wasn't his life, dammit! He wasn't trash; he wasn't meant to be trash. He didn't belong on the street with the junkies and hobos, who were too lazy to get a real job. He didn't deserve to look like this. He just needed one step up and he could get his life back._

_That's all this deal was about. Just one step back to a real--_

_\-- dug in deep, recalling all his hate, all anger, all his past, everything that was his life until this point, until this day in this beautiful house that exuded warmth, with children who looked up to him as though he was a hero, and a friend, a dear friend, who thought nothing but the best of him. And he could not be angered. He fell back, panting. The satellite dish had not moved._

_Charles took one step closer. "You know, I believe that true focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity. Would you mind if I..." He put his fingers to his temple._

_Despite everything inside him raging against such an invasion, he found himself agreeing--_

* * *

Marie bolted awake at the insistence of her bowels. She lurched up to her feet towards the door only to find it locked. She pounded on the door with her fists, yelling, "I need the fucking bathroom!" then stopped to stare at her hands. They were still green. Her scales decreased in prominence but her skin was still green and textured like leather. Usually, when she passed out, the powers she accessed faded away. What did this mean? Why did she still have Sauron's appearance?

"Hold on, hold on," someone-- Tank?-- said from the other side of the door. "Bathroom's downstairs. I ain't cleaning your puke up again, bitch!"

She was too frantic to even flip him the finger. Her head throbbed. Her stomach cramped. Her skin crackled with... with something. Like little static shocks zapping between her hair follicles. After she finished with the toilet, Marie stared at herself in the mirror. Well, she tried to; she still saw double and was having a hard time staying upright. 

Green scales and dark brown hair, check. She lifted a hand and accessed Pete. A headache drilled between her eyes but her hand went metallic. The drill turned off as soon as she boxed Pete up again. She pulled on Logan's powers, hoping to cure the drug hangover with his healing factor. This time, the headache hit her between the eyes and at the top of her head. Gasping with the effort, she boxed Logan up again. She fell to the floor, twitching.

Great. Fucking fantastic. She was tweaking down on benzos God only knew where her equipment was. Marie became aware of a weight on her neck. Her collar. The collar with audio transmitters disguised as spikes. She unbuckled it-- it took several tries with her twitchiness-- to make sure this was hers. It was. And she had one last transmitter. As long as it was on, any of her contacts could pick up the transmission.

And suddenly, Marie remembered Couldn't-Be-Pete. She'd chalk it up to delirium except for the remains of a jalapeno smokie with banana peppers, fresh onions, mayo, and ketchup on the floor. Marie, not Liz, ate her hotdogs like that. The only person besides Lebeau who would have known that was Pete. Pete who had suddenly turned into exactly the kind of guy the bratva recruited. Who'd been reluctant to call in a murder. Who spoke perfect Russian in her benzodiazepine-induced memory regurgitation. Who answered to the name Piotr. Marie drew her knees up, rested her head on them, and remembered to breathe. 

* * *

A few hours later by rough estimate, Marie felt somewhat human again. She immediately staked the new place out. This building was smaller with more regular, rectangular rooms. She figured they were in a renovated pre-war walk-up, one of many along the docks on the verge of gentrification because a Manhattan address near a noisy port was still coveted to anyone with too much money to burn or too little sense to shop anywhere else. 

The rooms had no outside locks meaning Max and Stefan's underlings didn't have time to even get the basics settled in. Half of the girls were all too happy to be kept on a steady diet of carbs and pills without the effort of having to spread. Added to that the bone-deep distrust of baseline police, the four armed guards were enough to keep them in line. 

Their guns and the girls' lethargy kept the guards comfortable as well to the point where Marie's wanderings were given only half an eye. She kept her movements slow and rambling, like the dazed stumblings of a chronic pothead with the munchies. For effect, her first stop was the makeshift kitchen.

The floor plan made canvassing the place much easier. On the other hand, security became just as easy. Instead of three floors and tonnes of walls to hide behind, they only had two floors and an open space. She was no waif; the brick pillars would do nothing to hide her. Again, the working rooms lay upstairs but instead of a narrow, blind-sided stair, access to the second floor involved a wide staircase that played a central role in the architecture. Not too bad for a dockside property. Once upon a time, these must have been factory floors, the rooms being the old middle-management offices looking down on the working masses. There was simply no place to hide.

She had one transmitter left in her collar and no way to gather information from the Vostochevskaya. That meant she had to MacGuyver some sort of receiver. It had to be small enough to be easily concealed but powerful enough to go through any soundproofed walls. A fantastic idea if she actually knew how to do that. Lebeau knew how to adjust pre-existing receiving devices of which she had none. Magneto had the skill to manipulate fine metallic components within those devices but, then again, she didn't have any. She flipped through the usual suspects-- Logan, Pete, Pyro-- no one knew much about electronics. One of the truckers who tried to touch her the first time she ran away had put together an amateur radio but it came in a kit.

So listening into the transmissions herself was out. She needed to be able to wander through the building to get a feel for it. It was so frustrating. She had the Genie all figured out, the crannies to hide in, the ventilators that carried sound. Now she'd have to do it all over again without back-up while security had their backs up, suspicious of any false moves. 

Marie studied the layout again. There was something off about the main floor. She couldn't put her finger on exactly why. If only there was a way to get blueprints, or a measuring tape. Hell, she'd settle for an outside view of the building. Also, a pony and a tropical island. Dammit. She made her way back to her room to regroup. 

Lebeau was waiting there for her. Of course he was. Because the last twenty-four hours hadn't been sufficiently traumatic. "There's the bitch face I know and love," he said.

"Someone should tell the Vostochevskaya that they suck at hide-outs." She let herself fall face-first onto the bed.

"Maybe but they're great city drivers. My guys were barely able to follow you."

"Where are we?"

"Along Twelfth in Hell's Kitchen. One of my people followed the van."

Twelfth Street. Close to the docks. Close enough to dump a body in the water, Marie mentally translated. "Next time, just read my notes. I put this place on the watch list."

"What watch list?"

"From the papers on Semyonov's desk. The ones I read that day when I planted the bug on his computer."

"I heard nothing about other properties, _sha._ "

"I sent this one with Pete."

Remy just stared at her for a beat.

"What?" she demanded.

"I been listening in on your guys, too. They ain't heard about other properties either. I know they ain't heard anything from Semyonov's house, not papers or digital files. You're welcome, by the way."

"What for?"

"Setting up a fight with Semyonov's boys while you were last there."

"That was you?" Marie asked. "You sent your people into a fight? Semyonov's boys don't play, Lebeau. They could've gotten killed."

"Easy, _sha,_ I sent another gang, not my own."

"That doesn't make it any better."

"You got your info, didn't you?" Lebeau snapped. "Though who the fuck knows where it's gone. Fact is, MacTac's worried about how little information you're getting out besides the transmissions from the Genie."

"What're you talking about?" Then she got angry. "You better not be implying what I think you are."

"You got two contacts outta here. One of us ain't doing our job."

"You're trying to get me to ditch Pete. To rely you more than him."

He held his hands up, palms out. "Just telling you what I know, _sha._ "

"Get out."

"I just--"

"Out!"

Marie slumped into bed. She was afraid Remy might be right. It added up. The ease with which she connected with Semyonov after mimicking Anne Rasputin. The two little boys pictured in Andrei's music room. Mikhail, bearded but with something of Anne around his eyes. Andrei's stories of how much Piotr hero-worshipped his older but more reckless brother. The names themselves, popping up in her memory even though she'd never touched Semyonov, Max or Stefan. Mikhail and Piotr, Mike and Pete. Anne. Aleksandra. It could be coincidence, of course, and Lebeau's damn influence but--

Goosebumps rose on Marie's arms. She rubbed them down, her head thundering with her own pulse. This wouldn't be the first time someone she thought she knew ended up crooked, starting with Pyro's terrorist inclinations back in her Xavier's days, all the way to Warren Worthington III and his ties to The Guild. Twenty-one months, two weeks, and four days ago, she closed the case that made her career as a detective. Tonight, she almost regretted it.

* * *

Someone rapped at her bedroom door the next morning, softly, almost politely. Marie squinted at the boarded windows of her room to gauge the sunlight. They couldn't possibly be back in business. She was not in the headspace to put up with this bullshit. She might hurt someone for real.

The door opened. Pete--Piotr?-- slipped in and said, "The boss wants you." He looked worried.

Sure, he always _looked_ worried. Was he really though? Was this part of his act, like he claimed, to get in with the bratva? He had transformed himself pretty damn well for someone who supposedly couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. Marie dragged herself up on her elbows. He came to her side immediately, a gentle arm around her waist.

"My God, what did they give you?" Not a trace of an accent in his voice. Handy trick that. He brushed her hair back. Lines bracketed his mouth, worry furrowed his brows. Was it real? "Ma-- Liz? Do you need more water?"

Or was she letting Lebeau get to her? This was Pete. _Pete._ "I'm fine. Which boss?"

"Semyonov. His car's downstairs with the engine running so--"

"So we can't _possibly_ keep your boss waiting."

Pete went metallic. His arm cooled around Marie's back and she pulled away. Stood up all on her own, too, goddammit. He just sat there, his steel face unreadable.

"Well? Take me to your leader already."

"We need to talk. After your visit." He sounded like Pete. He dressed like Stefan.

Siphoned memories popped open and closed, like a hundred manic jack-in-the-boxes, speaking in Russian, insinuating in drawled English, sniping in German, growling. Each pop of memory rammed a penny nail of a headache deep in her brain. Marie curled her fingers into fists so she couldn't hold them against her ears. That never worked anyway. 

* * *

Semyonov met her at the door, a rare occurrence. He hunched over his cane, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. "I have something to show you," he said, holding an elbow out.

Marie forced the voices to shut the fuck up as she tucked her hand under his arm. "Hello, _dyadya._ "

"You are well?"

"I'm fine. Settled into my new place."

"A new place?"

"The old place got raided."

Semyonov snorted. "This is what I told Maksim and Stefan. Keep a light touch. The younger generation, always thinking it knows better."

"Spoken like someone who's never been the younger generation," Marie teased.

He laughed, a creaky noise from disuse. "You like the piano. I have a piece I want you to play." 

He led her to the music room. The baby grand piano stood open, all its surfaces buffed to a mirror sheen. On the stand were five pages of sheet music. The notes looked hand-written. Marie leaned in close to take a better look. It _was_ hand written; erased pencil marks and dots of corrective ink studded every sheet.

"I don't know this one," she said.

"Of course not. It is an original. My Aleksandra wrote it."

Marie sat down on the bench and began picking out the harmonies on her right hand. It _did_ sound familiar, like a tune from her childhood. Her left hand wandered around the melody, gently adding whole-note chords. She could have sworn she'd heard it before but she couldn't quite place it. Unless... 

She delved deeper into all the little boxes with Pete's psyche. The more she opened, the easier the piano piece came to her, the notes flowing without the aid of the sheet music. Anne hummed this piece to her sons when they were young. When she'd been trying to put it together. 

Marie's fingers twisted over the next bar. Oh God. It was all true. Her oldest friend, Pete, was really Piotr Semyonov. And he'd lied about it! He must have known about this all, and he'd used her to-- to what? To get revenge? After Mikhail's death, did Piotr-- Pete-- also rejoin the Vostochevskaya Bratva? Was he even now working his own blood retribution for Illyana's kidnapping?

Her fingers stumbled again and this time, Marie couldn't stand to access any more of Pete's memories. Without her borrowed piano prowess, the notes were an incoherent jumble on the stand. She turned to Semyonov with a sad shrug. "It's a pretty hard song once you add it all up."

Rather than being angry, Semyonov appeared to be pleased. "Aleksandra had talent. She could have been a professional concert pianist."

"Why didn't she?"

"Ah, husband and children. I've told you how precocious Mikhail was. I would not have been brave enough to have another child after him. Thank God, Piotr was such a good, quiet baby. You barely knew he was there. The child would not even make a noise when he cried."

 _Where are they now?_ Marie wanted to ask. She needed him to say something along the lines of _just down the street_ or even _died in a car accident._ Anything that would disprove her theory. But she also knew she couldn't risk pulling him out of this fantasy just yet. Vostochevskaya or not, Illyana was still missing. And Marie still didn't have a killer to arrest.

"When you get to my age, you long to see the fruits of your labour pass on to your children. And their children. They--" he gestured to the rest of the house behind the closed door of the music room-- "think I am a workaholic, I believe is the right word. That I do not step down because I do not wish to. No, I do not step down because there is no one who will run this empire as well as it deserves to be run."

"Who're you waiting for?" asked Marie. "Max seems to be doing an okay job."

"Oh, yes, so okay his largest venture to date was raided by the police!" Andrei snorted. "When I was his age, the police feared _my_ raids. They could do nothing to _me._ I do not want an okay job. I want the best job."

"You want Aleksandra to inherit."

"She is the smartest, the bravest, the truest child--"

"She left us." Both Andrei and Marie whipped around. Max was at the door, bracing his arms on the frame. His expression was blank as always but the tips of his fingers were white against the moulding. "You precious Aleksandra left the family, _dedushka,_ and she will never come back. When Mikhail _did_ come back, he was so green, he got himself killed at the first war he ventured into."

" _You_ had him killed!"

"He ran into a fire fight when we told him to retreat."

"You should have--"

"What, _dedushka_? I should have run in front of the bullets to save your precious Mikhail Aleksandrovich? He was crazy."

"Do not speak of him so!" Andrei had spittle flecks on his cheeks. He'd retreated to speaking Russian, Marie realised. Her brain hurt as she switched it to Pete's memories to catch up with the argument.

"He was a drunk and a coke head, and loyal to the family only insofar as it would give him access to both poisons. And Illyana will die because you are too stubborn to acknowledge that Aleksandra will never return, not even at the threat of her daughter's death. Her hatred for you is that strong." Max sneered, one of the only expressions Marie had ever seen on his face. "And I am beginning to understand the depth of her hatred for you, you old fool."

"You will apologize!"

"Never. Never again." Max released his hold on the door frame. He stood straight, took a deep breath, and mustered his expression back into blankness. "While you have been reminiscing on the good old days these past years, I have been running the empire. I have the contacts now. I control the cash flow. You are living on my whims, not the other way around. But because I have been raised correctly by my father, your son, I will continue to support you in your old age. Because you are my grandfather, you fucking miserable old man. I hope you choke on your own bitterness and put all of us out of your misery."


	10. Chapter 10

Marie pressed her forehead against the backseat window. Her head hurt. The cold glass distracted her. Shop fronts and pedestrians blurred by. She closed her eyes.

Wait.

She could see outside? Marie opened her eyes again. She could see outside. She was riding in one of Semyonov's personal vehicles; of course it wouldn't be completely tinted from the inside. Her shadow hit the window at just the right angle to decrease the mirrored effect of the tint. They were going west on 43rd Street now; Theatre Row was coming up ahead. So the new place _was_ in Hell's Kitchen. Lebeau had told the truth. Wasn't that just a fucking lark?

The car slowed as it turned down Twelfth. Marie scanned the buildings. Mostly narrow walk-ups, a couple wider ones with open market-style ground floors. The car rolled into a garage off a side-street. Marie closed her eyes and looked whipped. Not a hardship. She let herself fall when the door opened.

"Get her inside," said Stefan.

Marie blinked up at him. "You got goods for me, baby?"

His lips flattened and he didn't reply. Tank pulled her out and she faked a stumble.

"Dammit. How much did you give her?" he asked Tank.

"Four tabs in a Gatorade," said Tank. "Mutants are all over the place with drugs, remember?"

"Yeah. The fuck knows what she was doing in the big house, too." Stefan's phone rang. Tank led her away as Stefan took the call. " _Da, ona zdesu_ ," he began but she switched to Pete's brain-- ow-- for the rest of the conversation. "Really. I guess the sooner the better."

Tank pushed her through the door and there went that conversation. Crap. The climbed two sets of stairs before Tank opened the door. Enforcers, gangbangers, and prostitutes trailed around the main floor of the Genie 2.0 or whatever they were going to call this place once it opened up. If it opened up.

One of the enforcers stood up-- and up and up--from a barstool. Pete. Hatred, molten and sudden, poured through every cell in Marie's body. She hated this building, every single one of the goons here, hated Stefan's smarm, hated Max for being a stone-cold bastard, hated Andrei fucking Semyonov, she even hated the other girls and their goddamn addictions. And she hated Pete.

"Let me take her up," he said with the barest American accent to his Russian.

She _hated_ God-fucking-damn Piotr Aleksandrovich Rasputin Semyonov or whatever the hell he wanted to call himself more than everyone else because she had a total of three stone fucking pillars in the utter disaster that was her life and God _damn_ him to hell as tiny fucking pieces of _shit_ for wrecking one of them! She hated so hard, she could barely breathe around the tightness in her chest.

Grinning, Tank pushed her forward. Marie let herself stumble. "Of course, Petya. You like her, do you not?"

"Well enough." He took her elbow, leading her upstairs to her room. She shook with the restraint it took not shoot his goddamn head. She could do it. She could twist out of his hold, kick his arms open, and take his piece. She could access Logan and just beat his ass down. Hell, she could access Magneto and yank his metal body to pieces. She could--

They reached her room. She pulled away as Pete locked the door. "Marie."

"Do not fucking touch me, Piotr."

He froze.

"God, what a fucking idiot I have been! I thought I was smart, getting my Russian buddy to infiltrate a Russian gang. Except it was actually all _his_ idea because it is _his_ fucking gang--"

"I am _not_ Vostochevskaya!"

"So Semyonov is not your grandfather?" she demanded. "Tell me you did not know anything about him being family. Tell me you were not deliberately keeping things from me."

He was silent again.

Marie clenched her fists so hard, she swore was drawing blood.

"Fuck you, Piotr."

"You've been speaking in Russian," he said.

" _Then fuck you harder in English!_ "

"Illyana--"

"You're going to pretend this is about Illyana again?" Mental check; she was pretty sure she had switched back to English. German would have been nice though. Lots of hard, spitty consonants in German.

"This has _always_ been about Illyana," Pete-- Piotr-- Whatever-- snapped. "I saw videos--"

"Videos from the computer you had me hack without telling MacTac?"

He closed his eyes. "Yes. That computer."

"Fuck you."

"Listen to me."

"I have been! And look where it got me." She pressed a hand to her temple. "I lost weeks tracking the wrong leads and it got Blitzen killed."

"No, please, Marie, it's not like that."  
  
"Why should I trust you?" Marie demanded.

"Because I'm your friend!" Pete hissed back. He took a breath. "Because we've been friends for over ten years."

"You lied about knowing Semyonov, you lied about your past, your mom, this op-- everything I know about you is a lie."

"Details!" Pete claimed. "Inconsequential details that don't really-- _Nothing_ about our friendship is a lie. When we used to have photography hikes around Salem, talking about Bobby and Kitty. When you called in the middle of the night from... from random landlines after grad and I'd stay on the line even when you didn't say a thing. When we'd send each other stupid video links after months of no contact, just because. _Those_ are all real. Not my parents. Not my grandfather. Not the... not the epically stupid decision I made to clean up the family mess myself."

He held out his hand. "You have to trust someone, Rogue."

She did. But God help her, she couldn't trust _him._

"Go fuck yourself, Piotr Aleksandrovich Semyonov."

* * *

He left.

Marie gave herself three minutes to bury her face in her undoubtedly bed-bug-ridden pillow and completely lose it. She got to two when she realised she wasn't alone. Rolling off the bed, she swung her left leg up to kick her intruder's legs out from underneath him and grabbed his shirt before the sound of his body slamming on the floor could send the enforcers running.

Lebeau smiled up at her. "Miss me, p'ti?"

"Which part of 'get out' don't you parse?" Marie narrowed her eyes. "How'd you get here?"

"With style."

She shook him. "Seriously. How did you get inside?"

He did some of his own eye-narrowing. "Rappelled from the roof."

"Which window am I?"

"What?"

"Which side of the building is this room?" Marie clarified. "And how many windows from the nearest corner?"

"You're south-facing, three windows from the east side of the building."

Semyonov's car had pulled into a six-story walk-up. She had climbed two short sets of stairs to get to the main floor which would have only made one storey total. The main floor had twenty-foot ceilings at the centre, the equivalent of two storeys in a building this old. Around the perimeter, under the prostitutes' rooms, the ceilings were seven feet high. From the interior, her room was the second door after the staircase. But the area under the staircase was solid.

She accessed Logan's powers to listen through the door. One of the bouncers had just passed by. Five counts later, another bouncer walked in the opposite direction. She sniffed. Marijuana, sweat, vodka, body odour, beer, urine, leftover noodles-- too many people! Too many scents. She drew back.

"What's going on?" asked Lebeau

"I think I found a hidden room. Did you get a good look at the main floor from up here? The space under the staircase is solid and hugs the wall when it should be ten feet away and hollow."

"There ain't any apartments next door," he said. "Want me to check it out?"

"There's bratva hanging out all over the place and even if you could sneak past, you wouldn't be able to get in."

"No way for you to get there either unless you scale the windows."

Marie grinned and hoped he couldn't see her nervousness. "That was pretty much the plan."

"You got enough of me to do that?"

"I think so."

"Bullshit." Lebeau rolled his sleeves up.

"What are you doing?"

"Giving you more to work with." He held his bare arms out.

Marie fought the urge to back away. "We had a deal. You help me with the Operation: Bastion case, I never use my powers on you again."

"The deal was you never use your powers on me without my consent," Lebeau corrected. "I'm consenting."

"Why?"

"You want to spend half a year in a hip splint after falling four stories? No? Well then you need a memory boost on my skills. Climbing walls ain't picking locks, y'know. The muscle memory goes much deeper."

Marie started to reach out then jerked her hands back again, holding them to her chest. "Why are you doing this? What's the catch?"

"Just fucking touch me already, will you, _sha_?"

She knew she'd regret this, sooner _and_ later. But he had a point about the parkour especially with a more modern building like this one which lacked outcropping ornamentation. Marie stripped both her gloves off, tucked them into her belt, and held on to Lebeau's arms.

_\--kept his balance centred and towards the wall, not away. His left arm, torso, and right leg held his weight in perfect balance. A small shift to the right and he could swing easily to the next windowsill. Brick cut into his fingers, hard enough to be felt through the calluses. He ignored it, shifting his balance now to the right arm, through his torso, down his left leg. Another shift--_

_"-- addition to the school," said Storm. "Emma tells me she has quite an attitude on her."_

_"Withdrawal?" he asked._

_"No, just good old fashioned teenage rebellion. It's good for her, actually. She's thinking for herself instead of cowing in fear. That said, there _is_ a fine line between finding your voice and becoming a bully yourself. But Emma and Sean have a great deal of experience in those matters. Angel will never be completely healed but with a great deal of support, she can have a normal--_

_\-- used his core muscles to slowly lift his legs away from the other building's. He bent in half, legs over his head, then straightened out in a vertical push-up motion to hook his ankles around a flagpole. Pushing off the wall, he looped up, catching the flagpole with his hands this time then shifted to a seated, upright position._

_He gripped the flagpole with his toes and the arches of his feet to add to add security to his balance before standing. The winds blew a touch harder at this elevation but he'd taken precautions against that. The niches in the stone were just enough to--_

_\-- smelled like peaches. Everything she owned must be saturated in peach scent. Peach was officially his favourite fruit. He pushed his shoes off and rested them on the hotel's ottoman with his ankles crossed. The movement distracted her enough that she didn't notice him sinking two of his fingers into all that lovely, soft hair, drawing even more peach scent out towards him. Sad how these movie appointments had become the best part of the month--_

Marie pulled away, panting, eyes wide. Remy-- _Lebeau,_ dammit!-- had the same deer-in-headlights expression. He opened his mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it.

"So. Um. Thanks," Marie blurted out before ducking out the window into the relative safety of climbing up a building using only her hands, feet, and an acquired sensed of balance to get into a room likely to be shot up by trigger-happy gangsters hyped up on paranoia. Infinitely safer than staying in her own room with Re-- Lebeau after that doozy of an absorption.

As climbs went, this was easy: a simple vertical movement five windows northward. Boards still firmly closed the windows off, preventing the occupants from seeing out. Getting a good foot grip might be tricky but her feet were smaller than Rem-- Lebeau's. Marie found just enough stretch in her arms to swing her weight from one window out-cropping to the next. Her breath condensed into a permanent cloud around her head. Appropriate and annoying. She couldn't quite feel the tips of her fingers which were likely a blessing considering how much she scraped them on the exterior facade.

Two more windows to go. And what the hell _was_ Lebeau thinking anyway with the peaches and the variation on the yawn-and-stretch? Granted, he was old enough to have learned that in its heyday but she thought they had a deal. Meaning she'd deal with his perma-horny in exchange for valuable information to use against organized crime in NYC, in turn, which was in exchanged in turn for the X-Men's protection should The Guild find out he narked on other gangs on a regular basis. Considering the infinite number of open mouths turned in his general direction every day, what the hell was he thinking attaching all those... those... _feelings_ with their appointments like they were dates?

Oh God.

In his twisted Guild mind, _had_ they been dating? Did _she_ considering them dating? She thought her patience with Lebeau was an example of her growing into her Big Girl Pants. Was her increased trust in him instead of Pete actually _her_ feelings or residuals of _Remy's_? And this was why Marie hated her powers sometimes. Most of the time, really. It messed her up something fierce. She really couldn't handle her worldview twisting around a second time today.

She reached the window of the farthest room, Martian's room, one of the few boy hookers in the Genie. Just to be on the safe side, she listened through. She put all her weight against the building, arms and legs spread to keep her balance. Off went Lebeau's power; on went Logan's. Martian's voice and scent hit her senses clearly. He had a customer, probably one of the enforcers. Now she turned Logan's powers off in favour of Magneto's. She pulled the nails on the window boards away from the wall. Then, using the same nails, she shoved the boards inwards.

The force of the board flying in knocked Martian out. His john opened his mouth to scream. Marie jumped in and slapped her hands around his face. The fat bastard dropped. She checked on Martian. She couldn't risk him waking up, so she touched him, too. As soon as he dropped, she released, gagged, and dry heaved over the bed. This op was going to kill her. It was going to throw her right off the bend and she'd end up jumping from the Statue of Liberty, a giggling, sobbing mess.

But for now, she closed the box off in her head marked Martian, AKA Jacob Trin-Duc. She had to refocus. The goal was the hidden room. Marie knelt on the small floor space left between the bed and the wall. Still channelling Magneto, she pulled nails out of the floorboards, one at a time until she had a space three boards across, just big enough for her to slip through.

Marie slid the floorboards side and slipped in, feet first. Her heartbeat thundered under her tongue. The only light in the space came from above her. She pulled her mini maglight out and twisted it on. The first thing she saw was a bare twin-sized mattress. A small lump huddled on the far end, so still Marie feared the worst. She inched further in and had to climb on the mattress. The space was the size of a wardrobe. She focussed the maglight upward. Bare drywall rose up six and a half feet, not quite to the ceiling. She couldn't see any signs of recording equipment-- no pinholes on the walls and ceilings or obvious plastic knobs.

She drew closer to the lump. "Hey. Hello?"

The lump didn't respond. It smelled so foul Marie feared she'd have to call on Jess again. The coroner would not appreciate another teenager on her slab. Marie would hate herself even more.

"C'mon, please be alive." Gently, she pressed a hand on the lump. She felt small sharp elbows, a foot, the spines of a backbone. The lump was a person, a small one. A child? Oh God, she didn't want to have to send a kid to a slab.

The kid shivered.

Marie nearly wept. "Hey. It's okay. I won't hurt you."

The kid's shivering grew more violent, accompanied by muffled sobs.

"My name's Mar-- Li--" Shoot. What name could she give? "I'm Rogue. What's your name, sugar?"

The kid only continued to tremble and whimper. Her entire back shook with a hacking cough.

"It's gonna be all right, I promise. Just tell me your name and I'll find a way to send you somewhere safe. Anywhere you want. Just let me know your name."

Two huge sunken eyes peered at her between folded arms. "Yana."

Marie swallowed a ragged breath. "Yana? Illyana?"

The little girl nodded once, cautiously.

"I know your brother, Pio- Pete. We've been looking for you so long. Your momma and brother are going to be so happy to see you again."

At the mention of her family, Yana found enough strength to lunge at her. Her stick-thin arms locked around Marie's neck. A clinking noise echoed her movements. A sweep of the maglight showed a chain running from the wall to Yana's right leg where it fastened with a manacle. Her whimpers gained volume, interspersed with coughs and desperate pleas of "I wanna go home, please take me home, I want my momma, please I want my momma."

Marie quickly put a hand to Yana's mouth. "Shhh. You have to stay quiet. We need to be sneaky, all right?"

Yana nodded and clamped her lips together.

"Good girl. Now, I have to go for a little while--"

"Nooo!" And she held on to Marie tighter. "No, please no, I'll be quiet, please I'll be quiet, please don't leave me here again, please, no, no, no, no."

Marie held her tiny body close, petting her hair like she was a baby. "Hush now, sugar, it won't be long. I just need to figure out a way to get you out of here in secret. I... I might need to call a friend."

"L-Like Pete's friends? In the big basement?"

The X-Men. "Exactly right. Some basement friends. I'm just a scout, looking to make sure you're here and now that I'm sure, I've got to get them okay? So you just have to be brave for a little while longer."

"I caaaan't! It's dark and, and, and my leg hurts and, and--" she ducked her head down-- "I made an accident in the bed."

"Honey, I don't care about the accident. No one does. You're so brave; what's a little accident in comparison, huh?" Marie cupped Yana's face in her hands. She looked nothing like Pete, perhaps due to her emaciated state. Maybe she resembled Anne in her childhood. "Look, I need to go. But you can have this." She gave Yana the maglight. "That's from your brother. Hide it good and don't turn it on unless you're sure no one can see."

"O-okay."

"I'll send someone to get you."

"Why not you?"

"Because I have to keep the bad men away." Marie glanced upward. "I should really go now actually."

"When will your friend come?"

"As soon as it's safe. I'm sorry I can't give you a better time, honey, but I'm working on this as I go." She gave Yana another hug. "My friend's name is Gambit. His eyes go red when he does card tricks."

"Magic card tricks?"

"Sure. And when he comes, ask him for a password. What do you want the password to be?"

Yana's scrunched her face. "Um. Magic."

"That's a perfect password. I'll let him know." Martian or his john were starting to make noises upstairs. "All right, I really have to go. I'll see you soon, all right, brave girl?"

Yana held the maglight until her bones whitened her skin. "Okay."

Marie jumped up, boosting her air time with a bit of Magneto's powers, then hauled herself through the hole. She needed to get Yana out of there. She needed to get her out tonight and like it or not, her best bet for that wasn't Piotr Rasputin nee Semyonov. It was Remy Fucking Lebeau.

Martian's john was starting to twitch. Marie quickly got to her feet and ran to his side to give him a good kick to the head. Consciousness solved. Martian could ID Liz as the attacked, which meant this op was officially over. Fine with her. She was getting sick of the damn green skin anyway.

She replaced the floorboards but bent back half the nails to make them easier to pull out next time. Then she was out the window, boarding it shut, before monkeying back to her own room. As she twisted around to slip into her room, she caught movement from the corner of her eye. Marie paused and opened up her mind to Logan's powers.

Car exhaust. Radiator pipes. Rubber on asphalt. Two million televisions. A Siamese cat in heat. Dog claws on concrete. A drug deal around the corner. A business deal three streets down. Bean bags smacking against a juggler's hands. Silk-kevlar-silica triple weave two roofs over. The same weave worn by one Remy Lebeau currently reaching up around her waist to pull her in.

"Did you find it?" he asked.

Marie sniffed. Yeah, same cloth. She smelled another one two roofs north. "I knocked Martian and his guido out but they'll wake up soon."

"There _was_ a hidden room."

"The little girl I told you about is in there. Get her." Marie curled her hands around Lebeau's lapel. "I could see through her fucking wrists. She's got an infected wound around her ankle from that manacle and she's so sick, she could barely talk between coughs. She's practically rainbow-coloured from bruising and I--" She caught herself before she could sob. She didn't cry in front of Pete; she'd be fucked sideways before she cried in front of Lebeau. "Get her out of here. Hide her. Keep hiding her until I tell you it's safe. She's a witness for this case and she needs to stay live."

"What about your boyfriend?" he asked.

Marie laughed. Lebeau took a step away. In hindsight, her laugh was probably more like an evil cackle. "Don't pretend you're worried when you've got this place surrounded by your people. Attack formation, right? Three points in the air, six on the ground, trap 'em in the middle. Not that you're expecting much of a fight with the Vostochevskaya's skeleton crew. Half of them are there for panic control."

"That's what I get for letting you in my head."

"Are you fucking nuts? It's broad daylight and all the girls are still in there, half-buzzed out of their heads."

"You're acting like this is our first time at the rodeo. So, which one of them did this to her, Stefan or Max?" Remy asked. His tone or the lighting in the room made his devil's eyes seem more intense, like he lit up a charge behind them.

"What does it matter?"

"True. They're both dead men."

Marie put a hand on his arm. "No. We do this the right way. Legally."

"Legal don't mean right."

"I ain't getting into a goddamn political argument with you. Just get the girl and leave before she gets caught in the crossfire of your fucking turf war." She pointed out the window. "Call your people off."

"Can't do, _sha._ We ain't gonna get a better day to strike than now."

"You're fucking selling me out, Lebeau."

"Selling you out means you hold some loyalty to me or the Guild. You willing to 'fess up to that,?"

Marie glared.

Snorting, Lebeau made his way out the window then paused. "You could get caught in the crossfire, too."

"Bitch, I _am_ the crossfire."

* * *

Marie ran out of her room-- thank God she hadn't changed from her visit with Semyonov-- arms out. "This place is going to get hit! Get the girls some place safe."

Basher barely looked up from his drink but Stefan straightened and Pete stood up from his chair.

"Where did you hear--" Pete began to ask but just then, glass showered down from the upper windows. The girls on the main floor screamed. The enforcers took their guns out. Small pellets rolled on the floor, hissing gas. Pete drew his piece, shifting to metal.

"Who'd be stupid enough to take a hit on us?" Stefan yelled, a gun in both hands.

"It's Guild!" Tank shouted back. "It's their MO. Fucking ninja-wanna-bes. Gas and--" A knife protruded from his throat, cutting off the rest of his sentence.

"The fuck is the Guild doing here?"

As she yanked two of the girls away from the middle of the room, closer to the exits, Marie felt pricking behind her head and she turned to see Stefan glaring at her.

"You did this!" He aimed his weapon at her.

Marie shoved the girls one way and lunged in the other, reaching into her psyche for Pete's powers. Warmth bloomed on her shoulder as her green scales melted into steel bands. "Get out of here!" she ordered the girls. "The Guild won't hurt you! Just go-- hey!"

Bullets ricocheted off her. Stefan was still shooting her, running at a tilt with a baton in his other hand. Marie crouched, making herself a smaller target. But the gas was sinking down here, too. Heat scorched her throat and eyes. Fucking pepper pellets. Goddamn stupid time for the goddamn Guild to go for drama instead of stealth. They wanted to send a message. _Gambit_ wanted to send a message. She knew how his brain worked. Hopefully, he'd get Illyana out before all hell broke completely loose.

Stefan drew close, both hands on his baton. "Max said to get rid of you. I shoulda done it as soon as we got you out of the boss' place."

Marie shot up, fist out. Flesh had no chance against organic steel; he was unconscious before he hit the floor. Thick fogs of pepper gas reached to Marie's chest. Bullets bounced off steel but she still had to breathe. Coughing, she waded through the fog, searching for more girls. Greenback curled under the bar, screaming. Marie yanked her up by the arm and pushed her to the exit, hoping she wasn't too out of it to figure it out.

"Motherfuckers!" Basher bellowed. "Come get me, motherfuckers! You can't get me!" He opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle-- where the everloving _fuck_ did he get a machine gun?-- spraying bullets all over the place like confetti.

"Stop! Stop it!" Marie screamed. "There are people on the second floor!"

But Basher was too caught up in himself to hear and Marie had drawn too much pepper into her lungs. She switched to Logan's healing factor. She'd still get hit and it would hurt, but at least she could keep going. That was her. Detective Marie D'Ancanto, the fucking Energizer Bunny. She ran up the stairs, ramming locks open and yanking at the doors. The pepper spray could enter the rooms this way but at least the prostitutes had a way to escape other than jumping out the boarded-up windows. She needed to get the gun away from Basher.

"What the actual fuck?!" Stacey X screeched.

"Hit. Get them out," said Marie.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"It's Liz! I'm--" Right. She looked nothing like Liz any more. Oh, to hell with it. "I'm NYPD. I need to you take charge of everyone from here to the stairs and make sure you get out. Can you do that?"

"You're a fucking pig?"

"Yes, Stacey, yes, I'm a pig. And we can bitchslap each other to death later but right now we're stuck in the middle of a firefight so you and I have to make sure the rest of the girls and boys don't get dead."

"I-- I should--"

Marie grabbed her shoulders. "Can you do that or do I have to find someone with bigger balls?"

Stacey shrugged her hands off. "Which rooms?"

"This point to the stairs. Look out for pepper spray and bullets."

A sucking roar filled the building. Marie and Stacey looked down to see a fireball shooting up from the kitchen. Marie seized two of the girls by their shirts, Stacey pushed the remaining three and they hurled themselves into Stacey's room with flames smacking their heels.

"And fire?" added Stacey.

Marie nodded. "And fire. Because we need a bit more of a challenge." She touched the door knob then drew back with a hiss. There went that exit. Whatever started the fire must have caught on the pepper spray particles. Smoke seeped under the door. The rest of the prostitutes who'd been too blissed out to be frightened now joined the group cry. Fantastic.

"Chill them out," she told Stacey.

"On it." Stacey gathered everyone around her and closed her eyes. The sobbing faded to heavy breathing. Kinky but Marie would take it over hysterics.

Marie popped Pyro out of her memory boxes to push the worst of the flames away from the room so she could have a look outside. The blackened hallway to the stairs were a no-go. A section in the other direction had fallen altogether. No way down there. Marie closed the door. The windows in this room had iron bars as well as wooden planks. Marie shed Pyro's powers for Magento's. She curled her hands in mid-air. The bars crumpled inward. Grunting, she pushed the bars and steel window frames out. She stuck her head out to look for a way down. The fire escape hung in the middle of the wall, twenty feet to her left. Marie reached out with Magneto's powers. She had never moved anything this large with so many little pieces. It felt like moving a house of cards: unscrew all the bolts from the wall but not between the steps and landings, hold the top section firm but keep the bottom one from swinging too violently, move it slowly, slowly, slowly, dragging iron against brick. She set her jaw, took slow breaths, and eased the magnetic fields around the fire escape until it hung outside Stacey's window.

Now to hold it there. Marie closed her eyes, feeling for the curved bars at the topmost ladder section. Just... over... there; she hooked it on the lip of the roof. Making a curt downward motion, she forced the bars through the roofing material. Taking several of the bars on the landing closest to the window, she bent them towards the building and pulled. The bars pushed through the brick wall. The sections showing through the wall, she curled into circles. That should keep them from slipping out.

"I'm holding the fire escape," she said. "Use it to get out of here."

"Who the fuck _are_ you?" Stacey asked.

"I'm the goddamn Batman. Now go!"

"There are other rooms."

"Let me worry about them or we'll all run out of time." The smoke was knee high now. The wall paint bubbled. Marie craned her neck to the right. There were seven more rooms that way, most of them occupied as far as she knew and she had no way to get to them without letting go of the fire escape.

The wall to her left exploded. Marie ducked, fell to her knees, but stiffened her arms to hold on to the fire escape. Pete, steel, singed jeans, and dust, stepped through the hole. He noted the fire escape at the window where Stacey on the landing, yelling at the girls to climb slow and steady, then nodded. "Are there any more?"

Marie jerked her head to the other wall. "That way. Don't know how many."

Pete put his head down, braced one shoulder forward, and rammed the wall. Seventy year-old construction had nothing on seven hundred pounds of angry, metal Russian. Marie heard walls crumble over and over as five girls stumbled through and smoke seeped higher into the room. Her lungs burned, and she couldn't see past the stinging in her eyes but she held that fire escape steady until Pete slung her up over his shoulder. An unconscious Martian hung on Pete's other shoulder.

"Everyone's down except us," said Pete. "Can you hold the fire escape as we climb it?"

"I can try," Marie said. Rather, she started to say but nothing between her sinuses and her diaphragm wanted to work. She nodded instead,

"Hold on."

He squeezed through the window. The fire escape shuddered as soon as he put weight on it. Marie gritted her teeth, wrapping Magneto's psyche around her like a blanket in the dead of winter. The creaking stopped. Pete climbed all the way out, testing his full weight with his hands braced on the window sill just in case, before twisting his width down the ladder. Marie kept her head down and held on to Magneto's flickering psyche as tightly as she could but every cough rocked her brain pan.

"Marie! Hold the ladder!"

Her next cough sucked the air out of her lungs and closed her throat down. Her eyes bugged. The fire escape seemed to sigh as though it felt Marie's weariness, then tilted to the left. Spots darkened her field of view as the last of Magento's German-flecked castigations leaked back into the recesses of her brain.

"Marie!" Pete's voice came from the end of a long tunnel.

Pain exploded on her right shoulder. The shock forced air into her lungs and Marie woke up, flailing. Pete was passing her to someone. She turned her head. Remy?

"Got her?" Pete asked.

Remy grunted in the affirmative. He held out a length of flat nylon rope, close to Martian. "Put this 'round him."

Marie looked down. Remy had his legs wrapped around hers, one arm looped around her chest. A harness held him to a zip line running from the side of the burning building to a lower roof two across the street. She had a harness around her body, too, looser than his.

"M'up," she said but he didn't head her. "I'm up!" she repeated, louder and he finally heard.

Something that might have been fear left his face. "Didn't even get to kiss you to break the spell."

"I can go by myself," she said. "Get Martian."

"Y'sure?"

The building answered for her. The creaking from within turned into screeching and the upper windows belched black smoke along with glass and wood splinters. Marie wriggled up higher into her harness and pushed away from Remy. He let go immediately, reaching for Martian, still out cold on Pete's shoulder. Pete hung on the building by virtue of his feet and fists burrowed into the walls. He had his face pressed to his shoulder, trying not to inhale any more smoke.

"Pete!" she croaked.

Remy swung away with Martian in his arms. "Got 'em!"

Marie read his intentions half a second too late; he pushed her down the zip line. Within moments, he pushed off as well, leaving Pete clinging to the Vostochevskaya's building. She twisted around in mid-line in time to see him leap off. Then the other roof came up, fast and dark. Marie curled her legs for impact and accessed Logan's powers in time to heal her ankle when another blast rippled the line, throwing her off-centre. Ow. The line released and she rolled with the momentum, stopping at a crouch on the new roof with her arms over her head for protection.

Sirens wailed down the Manhattan streets, overtaking the crackles of the fire. Marie stood, letting Logan's healing factor wash through her scorched lungs and scratched eyes. Martian sprawled close to the end of the line, his chest rising and falling steadily. Remy--Lebeau-- stood with one foot braced on the edge of the roof, watching the Vostochevskaya's building burn. It couldn't be later than four in the afternoon but the sky was darkening. With high-rises blocking the horizon, the fire could be mistaken for the setting sun, painting Lebeau's cheekbones in blacks and oranges. Red-violet kinetic energy flickered at the corners of his eyes; he had cut the zipline by charging it.

He turned to her and smiled. "Mission accomplished, _sha._ "

"Mission..." Funny how adrenaline and healing factor stirred up all those lovely rage-bitch feelings again. "Mission accomplished?! Mission fucking--" Roaring, Marie charged, launching into a high kick.

Remy blocked with his arms, stepping back. Landing on her back, she twirled around to fake an ankle hook only to grab a handful of roof gravel to charge. She threw them in a wide arc.

"What the-- stop!" He bent backwards, dodging most of the projectiles. When he came back up, he had two metal escrima sticks in hand. "What the ever-loving fuck, D'Ancanto?"

"You almost killed everyone!" She switched to Magneto. Krav maga. Five jabs to his torso which the blocked successfully with his escrima but that was all right. She only did it to distract him from the side of her hand to his windpipe. He staggered back again. Lines hardened his face. He attacked with a volley of spinning thrusts using his escrima interspersed with low kicks. Marie swept the sticks away and danced free of his legs.

"What does it matter? They were scum."

"There were six gangbangers to eleven hookers."

"The rest of my team were there to extract the girls. If those idiots hadn't set fire to their own damn place, this wouldn't have happened. I'd never hurt the girls, you know that."

"And I'm supposed to believe you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart? Because you're _such_ an upstanding citizen. Mighty convenient that getting rid of this bratva means you get the territory."

"We don't steal kids for brothels."

"No, you just shoot their parents and abandon them to the street," Marie blurted out. She didn't know where that came from but damn, her subconscious was a righteous bitch.

Lebeau's expression froze, his eyes truly flashing now. "You really think I'm as low as them. Them that take kids, torture 'em, then give 'em to sick men to fuck. I'm amazed you can bring yourself to come within a foot of me."

"Can we not make this about your man-pain all the goddamn time? Y'know, what? Fuck it. Yes. Yes, I severely doubt your honour-amongst-thieves bullshit most days, but right now I just really do not care. I really couldn't give a rat's putrid ass. My landscape is keeping Illyana safe and nailing this perp's ass to the wall. I trust you as far as I can use you and when that aspect of our 'relationship' ends, I'm going after your ass as well." Marie hissed to a stop, out of breath, temples throbbing with emotion.

Three feet away, Lebeau panted just as heavily. His fingers writhed around an invisible deck of cards. Even in the dimming light, she saw the thin white line rimming his lips.

"I'll take Yana back to the safehouse where we practiced," he said. "I'll watch over her myself. Call me when this is over and you'll get her back. Otherwise, don't fucking call me at all, Detective."

He jumped off the roof. Marie ran to the side but he had disappeared along with the rest of the Guild. She pressed the balls of her palms into her eyes. Fuck. _Fuck._


	11. Chapter 11

Nearly everyone Marie had ever absorbed reached a point in their lives where they made the first step to irrevocable change. Erik Lensherr. John Allerdyce. Remy Lebeau. Karl Lycos. Hell, even good guys like Logan. A point where that step seemed the best-- not the easiest but the best-- choice if they wanted the rest of their life to be bearable. Marie had reached that point. Standing in front of the police barricade, with her hair burnt and melted pieces of PVC popping out of her healing skin, wearing boots on loan from the FD and a CSI coat from the Tenth Precinct techs, she finally could not give an actual fuck. 

"I'm taking your squad car," she told the officer closest to her. 

Without waiting for a reply, she slipped into the driver's seat, snapped the sirens on and booted it all the way to Turtle Bay. She left the car right in front of Andrei Semyonov's townhouse with the lights on and to hell with the neighbours. Yanking the front door off its hinges, she pushed her way through the butler and a pair of very discrete bodyguards. She didn't even miss a step as she pulled the magazines out of their handguns and emptied them.

"Max!" she yelled up the stairs. "Maksim Ruslanovich Semyonov, you're under arrest. Come out with your hands where I can see them or piss me off and I yank you out by your fucking fillings." She didn't know if she had the finesse to do that but it seemed like such a fun idea to try.

Unfortunately, Max walked out entirely on his own steam, hands up near his head. "What seems to be the problem, officer?"

Marie accessed Sauron's powers and shifted into Liz's disguise. She changed back.

"Ah. I see." He held his hands out.

Dammit, she didn't have any cuffs. The kitchen wasn't that far away. Marie floated a pair of butter knives and wrapped them around Max's wrists.

"I will, of course, be contacting my lawyers about the irregularity of this arrest," said Max.

"You do that. While you're at it, see if they also find anything irregular about five murder charges, prostitution, sexual assault against minors, and kidnapping your own fucking cousin."

"Kidnapping?" Pete. Piotr. He stood at the entrance to the north hallway, the one leading to the music room and Semyonov's office. Like her, he still wore the remains of the clothes he'd had in Hell's Kitchen. Unlike hers, his clothes smouldered. "What's she talking about, Max?"

"Nothing worth repeating," said Max. "The officer is mistaken."

"Illyana was in the building that burned down. She's fine," Marie quickly added. "She's somewhere safe."

"You said Los Damas had her," Pete said. "That as long as we had a united front, we could strike and get her back."

"As far as I know, this is true," said Max. "You saw the videos. Would I do that to my own blood?"

Marie snorted. "He's lying. He hates you because your mom is Andrei's favourite. Andrei wants you to take over the bratva instead of Max. He chained her up in a closet-sized room for two months. He probably made those videos himself, him and his lackey, Stefan, then gave it to Los Damas to send."

Max raised his voice to address the butler. "Get our lawyers on the phone, will you? Add something about excessive violence during arrest."

"Max?" Pete took another three steps closer. "Maksim? _Eto pravda?_ "

Max pressed his lips together. 

Pete continued in broken Russian. "Max, in the video... the people in the video hit Yana. They... they used... did you hurt Illyana?" When his cousin still didn't answer, Pete rushed him, snarling. "Did you hurt her?! She's only ten years old! She knows nothing about this life! How could you--"

Marie inserted herself between Pete and Max but Pete was too angry and too damn big. She tried to draw on Magneto but her memory boxes remained stubbornly closed. Ditto with Pete's psyche and Logan's. Great. What an excellent time for her system to shut down. Fortunately, the Tenth Precinct had their shit together because another police siren parked itself outside the door.

Turning her back on Max, Marie faced Pete's cold steel face head on. "Let him go."

"Illyana--"

"Is safe. But if you don't unwrap your fingers from around Max's neck, you'll get charged with manslaughter and go to jail. Who'll take care of your family if you're in jail?"

Pete shuddered. Marie hadn't known what steel goosebumps looked like until this moment. She rested her hands on his shoulders.

"This isn't you. Let him go, Pete."

His nostrils flared but he let go. Max fell to his knees, gasping. Back-up streamed into the townhouse, their orderly blues and the emotionality of the day making Marie self-conscious for the first time she started this op. Her hands dropped off Pete's shoulders and she clutched her borrowed coat as she turned away.

A heavy hand on her arm stopped her. "Wait," Pete said.

Marie arched a brow.

He gestured to the hallway. "Come with me?"

They walked side-by-side to Semyonov's office. Pete opened the door. Red and blue lights threw moving shadows against the walls. Marie entered first but only Pete spoke.

"The police are here, _Dedushka._ "

Semyonov replied in Russian. "Tell them to leave."

"No. It is over. I have Illyana back. I am going home."

" _This_ is your home, Piotr. You were lost--"

"No."

"-- but you are now found."

"No, Grandfather. I am leaving."

Semyonov rose from his chair, arms braced on the table. "I created a kingdom for you, Piotr! You could have the world at your fingertips. All these riches, all this power, it is all for you."

"I do not want it."

"I know, I know, you want to paint. And you can! I can give you more than enough money to paint forever--"

Pete shook his head, looking away.

"-- and take care of your little sister as well. She can attend the best schools, have all the toys--"

"Enough! I do not want to hear you anymore." Pete started to roar then fell a step back, his shoulders lowering, his metallic form stripping away. "I... simply do not care about you any more, Andrei Semyonov. I do not care about any of this. I used to blame you for so many things but now I see there was no reason. Then I thought only you understood love and loyalty to family as I did. But again, I was wrong. I am happy without you in my life. My sister is happy never knowing you. My mother... sometimes, my mother sings."

Andrei seemed to sway back, like a mast in a storm. His hands flattened on his desk.

"I don't want what you're offering. Never speak to me again. Never speak to my family. You are all dead to us." 

* * *

Pete disappeared before Marie could talk to him about... well, everything. She suspected he was on a one-way plane ticket back to Boston to hug his mom because he was Pete and she was kind of a massive jerkwad shithead. So she hailed a taxi back home to Brooklyn, stood under the shower until the water went cold, then collapsed into bed. The next day, she called Lebeau's number. He didn't answer; she didn't know if she was disappointed or relieved. She left a message-- keep Illyana for another three days then drop her off at Xavier's to Logan's care. Logan was good with kids, whether he admitted it or not. Then she went into work to fill out paperwork for four hours straight then returned home for more sleep. She wanted to sleep for a week. She never wanted to see another piece of vinyl for the rest of her life.

Two days and a weekend later, Marie was back at her desk at MacTac, on her third reading of DNA reports for the mutilation case but she was still sure she'd read it wrong. She rang Jessica Jones up. "Jess, what the hell?"

"Good morning to you, too, sunshine."

"Morning. What the actual hell?"

"I'm as pissed off as you are but the science doesn't lie. Okay, it does and I know several ways how, some of which are pretty easy to fake up. But that's not true in this particular case. The DNA found in Jo-Belle Kaponski, AKA Blitzen, don't belong to Maksim Semyonov or Stefan Igoshkin. Of course with Igoshkin all crispy, his samples aren't the best to work with."

Marie smacked her head against her desk. She lifted her head and did it again. Then one more time with feeling.

"What we _can_ tie to them are the vic's stomach contents and the crystals in her dress to the food and drugs found in the Genie," said Jess. "That's what's so great about meth; no two batches are alike. With your recordings and the witness testimony from two of the hookers should be enough to slam them with human trafficking, possession of at least four different illegal substances, money laundering, and tax evasion. I love taxes, don't you?"

"So we only have possible motive and opportunity for murder one. Defense is going to hammer us."

"Like chicken fried steak in South Carolina." She heard Jess shifting some equipment around. "Is there any way you can convince the little girl's family to go on the stand? Trafficking kids for the sex trade carries a lot more weight than adults, especially adorable little blonde girls."

"I can ask again but I sincerely doubt it." Massaging her temples, Marie said, "Also means the killer might still be out there."

"I hope the fuck not."

"You and me both." Marie spread the evidence over her desk and monitor. "Okay, so the pieces didn't add up the first time around. Max and Stefan invested a lot in those girls. They're huge money makers, money they needed to supply their mutiny against Semyonov because whoever has the gold, rules. Fifty to seventy bucks a pop for the streetwalkers, a hundred to three a night for the second floor, four to eight hundred an hour for the third floor. It would be like randomly killing the horses you trained to go into the Kentucky Derby."

"Maybe the girls-- and the two guys-- narked."

"To who? If they'd talked, I wouldn't've had to go undercover."

"To Semyonov? The old man has a lot of mutants working for him. Maybe he's pro-mutant."

"Maybe."

"Doubt it?"

"When greed's involved, it doesn't matter who your people are."

"But truly under all that cynicism, you love raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens."

"Tell anyone and they'll never find the splinters of your body. Look, we'll talk again later. My guy's here for our nooner."

Marie rolled her eyes. "Rub it in, you lucky bitch."

"Hell yeah. Check your email for the extensive report." Jess hung up, leaving Marie to smack her head on her desk one last time.

* * *

The time had come for drastic measures. This homicide case could be back to square one. The only way Marie would know for sure was if someone else died while their main suspects were imprisoned or dead. She appropriated the whiteboard used by the MacTac end of the op to piece the case together while she'd been undercover. The rest of the team was at lunch or wouldn't come in until the evening shift. All the better for thinking.

She rolled her chair away from the white board. Andrei Semyonov's fuzzy eight-by-ten crowned the rectangle with Max and Stefan immediately below him. The smudge of Pete's name was readable only to her. The Genie's workers lined up in the middle of the board according to length of time "employed." Below them, a mess of repeat johns with lines connecting them to the women they usually chose for sex. They only caught and ID'd twenty-seven johns during the raid; Marie knew the Genie had at least a hundred regulars. The six dead, mutilated prostitutes, their pictures bordered in red ink, also had links to the johns.

A file of demographic information pertaining to the johns sat to her right. A stack of contact numbers for the prostitutes lay on her left. She also had a phone, a sharpie, and index cards. The glamorous life of a detective second-class, indeed.

Just before first break on evening shift, Marie ran to the door to the captain's office at a sprint and slammed a photo on the desk. Charlotte looked up from her computer.

"Rory Campbell."

Charlotte looked down. "What did he do? Incur a hundred dollars in library fines?"

"He's the killer."

That caught her attention. "Talk to me."

Marie spread more papers on her desk. "Psychologist, US Army reserve PSYOP. He refused DNA sampling--"

"Half the johns did."

"According to the girls, he's had contact with every single one of the vics. Injured in combat, underwent hospitalisation at Alabama VA Hospital where one of his most frequent visitors was one Senator Simon Trask, world-renowned supremacist asshole."

"Military weapons training includes blade work."

"PSYOP would know a dozen ways to ID a body. And how to keep from IDing one."

Charlotte's pressed a button on the phone. "I'll get Judge Walters to approve the warrant. Put a team together, get the address--"

"Done and done!" Marie ran back out to the main floor.

* * *

In comparison to the Vostochevskaya take-down, arresting Rory Campbell was a non-event. Marie and a team of five went to his duplex in Queens, he let them in as soon as they rang the doorbell, and sat patiently on the couch as Marie handed over the warrant.

"I thought you'd never come," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Everett Thomas demanded.

"When the police raided the Genie, I thought I was done for sure. But you never came. I would have killed someone else if you hadn't come today."

Marie sidled beside him. She took her tablet out of its pouch and laid it on the coffee table across from Campbell's seat. "Hey Rory. My name's Marie D'Ancanto. I'm in charge of this case. Would you like to confess to the murders?"

"Oh yes."

"All five murders?"

"Six," said Campbell. "I'm pretty sure I killed six of them. But... but maybe the first doesn't count?"

"Do you mind if I record our conversation?"

"Certainly not."

She turned the tablet on. "Okay, Rory, what've you got to say for yourself?"

Campbell let out a laugh. One of the cops twitched; Marie gestured for him to leave the room.

"I thought you sounded familiar," Campbell said. "Mistress Liz. You're a shape-shifter. That must come in handy in your line of work."

"Sometimes."

"I didn't like you very much. That's why I didn't kill you."

Fucking hell, talking to him was like talking to Hannibal Lector. "If you liked the other girls, why did you kill them?"

"Because... because I had to." For the first time, his tone faltered. "I'm not specist, Detective. I try not to be anyway. That's why I only ever sleep with mutants. I wanted to prove... to prove that I didn't hate mutants."

"Sure. That's why you were a Genie regular."

"Exactly! I wanted to... I needed to sleep with them. With mutants. I thought if I loved them enough, I wouldn't have to kill them. But the need was still there. Do you understand?"

Marie could only nod.

"You _should_ understand," Campbell said. "MacTac took down Operation: Bastion. You know what that's like."

"What does Operation: Bastion have to do with your situation?"

"Just this." Out of nowhere, Campbell pulled out a knife and slashed at his head. 

Marie and Thomas jumped out to stop him but he had already cut himself. Blood streamed from his scalp, a strip of skin and hair hung over his ear. The bloodbath wasn't what froze Marie in mid-lunge. She froze at the sight of metal plates and microchips sticking out of Campbell's skull.

"They're operating on Americans, too."

* * *

Marie never wanted to go undercover again. She closed a box full of Mistress Liz's equipment, folding the flaps shut. Hefting the box, she headed for the door only to half-slip on something. She looked down. Remy's purple handcuffs curled around her left foot. Marie put the box back down on the table to pick the cuffs up.

Halfway to opening the box, she stopped. The cuff's suede hoops felt downy against her palm, cool from sitting on the floor. The steel chain links between them chimed as she shifted their weight from one hand to the other. On the table, to the right of the box, lay her phone. Marie picked her phone up after tucking the box under her other arm. Dr, MacTaggert had left eight messages. Marie ignored them all, going to her address book instead, and scrolling to Remy's coded name.

She could return the cuffs. She _should_ return them. Or she could throw it with the rest of the undercover stuff for the police auction. Then again, if the cuffs were personal property, the unit wouldn't want to be connected to that. Although someone as loaded as Remy could probably afford another set of sex handcuffs. Hell, he probably had one in every colour.

Marie pocketed her phone and put the cuffs back down on the table.

Then picked them up one more time.

She almost left them again but, swearing, she finally opened the box, threw the cuffs on top of everything, closed the flaps down again, and to hell with Remy Etienne Lebeau, King of the United Guilds, pyromaniac, skeevy old man. She pulled her phone out to erase his name from the address book.

 _Are you sure you want to delete this contact?_ the phone asked.

Marie scrolled to the _yes_.She closed her eyes. Swore. And pocketed her phone. If she didn't hurry, she'd never be able to avoid the shift-change jibes.

At the last minute, she got off the train to transfer to Mutant Town connection. She knew she looked out of place, decked out in business casual pulling a brightly patterned granny cart behind her. She wanted to find Skids before she turned in for the day. She didn't even know where the woman lived, only where she worked.

The sunrise gradient slowly faded off the mirrored buildings when Marie reached Skids' usual street. She wasn't there. Marie tried walking down further and peeking into the alleys but nothing turned up. Giving up, she retraced her steps back to the subway station.

There, leaning up against the walls leading down to the platform, was Skids. Marie jogged to her side. She couldn't help but smile but coming from an uptown yuppie, the expression pulled out all of Skids' thorny guards.

"Are you Skids?" Marie asked, heading her off before she could say something that a perfect stranger would find unreasonably rude.

"Who the fuck are you?" Skids asked.

"I'm a friend of Liz's."

"Liz, huh? Tall and blonde with blue wings?"

"Actually, brunette with snake skin and about average sized," said Marie. "You're as vigilant as she said you would be."

Skids snorted. "So, Liz managed not to get dead. Good for her."

"She went home," Marie half-lied. "But before she left, she wanted me to give you some contact numbers. Liz told me you looked out for people here, that you warned her against that mutant fetish brothel. She wanted to make sure you had some back-up if you need it, now that she's not here."

"Some back-up she was. Probably got herself caught by the cops when that whole place when down in Hell's Kitchen." Skids eyed her sharply. "You're a cop, aren't you?"

"Yup." Marie flashed her credentials. "Detective D'Ancanto, Mutant Crimes Task Force. We specialise in crimes against or by mutants. We're a big damn deal, y'know. We've won awards and everything."

Skids snorted.

"Hooboy. Liz mentioned you'd be a hard sell. But here it goes anyway." Marie gave her two business cards, her own, and a generic card from the Xavier Institute. "A good friend of mine said you have to trust someone. When you're ready to do that, I hope you can trust one of us."

* * *

With one thing after another, mostly a combination of more paperwork, guilt, and sleep-debt payoffs, Marie didn't go up to Westchester County for another week. It finally snowed, late for the season, but she welcomed it in place of sleet, especially while riding Quasi along the freeways. After parking beside the Grey Clinic, she shook the snow off her shoulders and stomped the slush off her boots as soon as she entered the foyer. Storm was trimming the topiaries near the library. She stopped and turned around at the mess Marie was making of the floor in front of the security desk.

"Gardeners not doing a good enough job?" Marie asked.

"I still find gardening soothing and my greenhouse in the atrium needs very little tending right now." Storm put down her pruning shears. "It's good you're here."

"The doc's been at you, too? Man, you'd think I was paying first class insurance premiums." She headed to the clinic, partially to end the conversation. Any time she and Storm talked for longer than five minutes, the talk ended and the shouting began.

"While I'm certain Moira would gladly treat any ailments you may have acquired in the course of duty, I'm afraid she needs you for something else entirely. As does Peter."

In the movies, whenever something bad or sad was about the happen, the special effects team threw in thunder, lightning, and rain. Which was bullshit, of course; some of the worst news in the world happened on bright, sunny days. When Storm had bad news to tell, no clouds appeared over her head in comic strip fashion. But there was a heaviness in the air around her, sometimes a hint of coldness, too.

Marie walked double-time to the clinic, like walking away from Storm would send the bad news away. But Storm followed her in, probably to herald MacTaggert's wrath.

"Finally! Haven't you gotten any of my messages?" the doctor demanded.

"I was busy. Is this about more blood work? 'Cause I think I'm getting anaemic from all the pokes."

MacTaggert led them into her office. She swept her glasses off her face and perched them on the top of her head. She rubbed the inside corners of her eyes. Marie realised how dark the bags were under the doctor's eyes. Storm's as well. That chilly, Sixth Sense feeling had followed Storm into the little room. "When Gambit brought Illyana here, she was malnourished with a terrible cough," said MacTaggert. "I must say, he did a good job of keeping her healthy. How did he know to refeed her slowly?"

Marie didn't know the answer and MacTaggert didn't seem to be interested any way.

"We thought she'd caught an infection while she was imprisoned but... There's no real good way to say this: Illyana has ALD."

The bottom fell right off of Marie's stomach. She reached for the nearest chair and collapsed. She couldn't feel her knees. "What? How... do you know for sure?"

"We ran all the tests. Twice. There's no mistaking it."

"Oh God. If I'd answered my phone, you could've gotten something from my blood--"

"No," MacTaggert said firmly. "I've told you before and I'll tell you again, your immunity to ALD is yours alone for now. I would not have been able to create an antiviral or a vaccine from you even if I had a year. I _have_ had a year and I'm only two notches closer to understanding how your body works. Even if you had come in the day she was brought and we performed a transfusion then and there, it still wouldn't have worked."

"Then why did you leave so many messages?"

"You're Peter's best friend," said Storm. "And Illyana has been asking for you." She laid a hand on Marie's shoulder and this time, Marie didn't have the strength or frame of mind to shrug it off.

"Where is she?"

"I can show you. It's in a new wing of the clinic. Pete and Logan built most of it. I strongly suspect neither man slept throughout the build."

"I wanted her here at all times so we could better monitor her health," said MacTaggert. 

"So... wait, Illyana's powers catalysed while she was kidnapped and she got ALD?" Marie asked.

"That's the damned thing; it hasn't catalysed. The disease is attacking potential mutants now, not just activated x-factors. Rather, we're noticing ALD in non-catalysed mutants now that we know what to look for. I suspect there are many deaths attributed to pneumonia or some other respiratory disease which should have really been attributed to ALD."

"Oh my God." Marie sat up straighter. "Oh my God, Pete! Pete must be a wreck. And his mom... oh my God."

"They're here as well," said Storm. "And they can live here as long as they want. We've cleared a small set of apartments for them on the third floor."

"I need to--" Marie gestured helplessly at the bags she'd brought from the police station. "I was just going to deliver some presents but it all kind of seems useless right now."

"I think it's perfect," MacTaggert said. "She _has_ been asking for you. I think she looks to you as a cross between a cool older sister and Superman."

Marie let out a chuckle mixed in with a sob. "Would it be okay to visit her right now?"

"Of course."

* * *

Marie paused before entering Yana's quarters. The little girl's room was a combination of childish fancy and the dreams of an adolescence she might never experience. The bed and dresser were antique finds, whitewashed, with peach and yellow detailing. Pop group magazine centrefolds hung beside framed pictures of friends and a landscape with horses. The reinforced double doors to her room, part of a negative pressure differential to keep the ALD virus in ruined the theme.

Yana lay on her stomach on her bed, talking to someone through her tablet. She looked like any other tween, the way she rested her cheek on her hand and how her angel-fine blonde hair waterfalled over her shoulder. The only difference was the IV connected to a permanent port just under her clavicle.   
Marie pressed the buzzer. Yana looked up, brightened and waved her in. While the little girl presumably said good-bye to her friend, Marie donned a disposable gown, nitrile gloves, and a filtered mask. MacTaggert didn't think Marie could get ALD but she wanted to err on the side of caution. When Marie opened the first door, air rushed in with her. The first door shut. The vacuum continued for two full minutes before the second door opened.

"Hi, Rogue!" Yana said, waving.

"Just call me Marie," she said. "I got a few things for you from everyone at the station."

"Oooh, presents! The best part about being sick." As if to punctuate her statement, a hoarse, dry cough bowed Yana's shoulders. She quickly grabbed a mask lying upside down behind the tablet and covered her mouth. 

Marie waited it out.

"Sorry," said Yana. "Dr. Moira said I should wear the mask as much as possible but the mic on my tablet isn't the best and I wanted to make sure Elisha and Anita could hear me."

"Those friends from school?"

"Uh-huh. Real friends. The ones who didn't freak out. Wow, that's a lot of presents."

Recognizing the subject change, Marie relented. She emptied her grocery bag on the bed. "Everyone pitched in a little something. Here's a DVD series about--"

"Oh! I always wanted to watch that!"

"Good. And some magazines, a box of homemade cookies and... and here." Marie held out a stuffed doll. This one was made of cotton and yarn, with real denim clothes and stubby grey claws, six in each stuffed fist. "I know you'll always love Bamf but I wanted to give you someone else to hang out with."

Yana laughed. "It's Mr. Logan!"

"Actually, I call him Snikt." 

Yana tilted her head to one side, brows wrinkling.

"It's the sound his claws make when they come out," Marie explained.

At that, Yana laughed so hard, she went into another coughing fit. "Omigosh," she managed to gasp between coughs. "I can't unhear it."

"Mr. Logan was the one who found me and helped me get to Xavier's. I know he acts pretty mean all the time but he's really a nice guy. Even now that I'm with the police, he looks out for me." She brushed back Snikt's embroidery-floss hair. "For me, he's Pete, Kurt, and a German Shepherd rolled into one."

Yana held her mask in place again. "Oh! Oh! Please, I can't laugh. I'm gonna cough."

"Sorry." But Marie grinned as she spoke.

Yana swept her gifts up to arrange them on her dresser. All except Snikt who took centre court at the top of her pillows. "I have something for you, too."

"Oh, honey, you didn't have to."

"I kind of didn't. I mean, I made a card for you. Pete gave me acrylics 'cause watercolours get so smudgy and take so long to dry. Acrylics are way better. Here." She handed Marie a painted envelope taped to a cube-shaped gift box roughly the size of a grapefruit.

Bemused, Marie accepted. She took a card out of the envelope. White flowers chased each other through rows of geometrical pines. The execution lacked Pete's finesse but the flair for artistry was there. She only had to practice. God willing, she'd have years to practice. Marie had to force herself to release the card. Her grip had wrinkled one corner. She smoothed it away with her thumb.

"An Illyana Rasputin original _and_ a gift? It's not even my birthday until September."

Mischief played at the corners of Yana's eyes. She bounced on her knees with excitement.

Marie opened the box. Inside, nested in cotton, was a pair of boxing gloves made of blown glass. They resembled old-fashioned marbles with an apple green and teal swirl on the inside and a thick, transparent shell forming the details of the thumb and the tips of the mitts on the outside. A delicate loop of transparent glass popped from the base of the gloves with a silver hoop running through it.

"It's a Christmas ornament!" Yana burst out.

"It's beautiful," said Marie. "But, Yana, sugar, you didn't have to buy this for me. This looks so expensive."

"I didn't buy it. Remy did."

Ice and heat knotted somewhere in the region of Marie's chest. "Remy... brought this to you? Here?"

Yana shook her head. "While we were hiding from the bad guys."

"He was supposed to keep you safe indoors."

"He did! We shopped online." She rolled her eyes with all the disdain a ten-year-old could muster towards adults. 

"Oh. Well. Um, thank you, I guess, but I really don't need this."

"He said you'd say that."

Now Marie shifted from perplexed to pissed. "Yeah? What else did Remy say?"

"He said he was gonna get you a gift because, um..." Yana screwed her face around trying to remember. "Because it's time you got something just because it's stupid and sparkly, not because you need it or you traded for it."

"Oh."

"He hasn't visited me yet. Do you think... do you think he's scared of my disease?"

Marie wrapped her in a hug. "Oh, no, sugar. Remy wouldn't care about that at all."

"Then why doesn't he come?"

"It's... it's kind of complicated. He's got two daughters himself, y'know, but they live with their momma really far away. Maybe meeting you made him miss them and he's gone to visit."

"He could have at least called."

Yana sounded so much like a put-out adult that Marie had to laugh. "You're right. It's common courtesy to leave a message if you're going out of town. I'll make sure to let him know the next time I see him."

"And you'll remind him to visit?"

"Of course!"

"Good." Yana smiled, a little shyly. "I want to... It'd be nice to..." Her face screwed around into a grimace, the kind you made when you were trying not to cry. "I looked up ALD. Everyone who gets it dies. Did you know that?"

Marie hugged her again and this time, she didn't let go. She tucked the little girl's head onto her shoulder and ran her hands through her hair. "I read that, too."

"I don't want to die, Marie."

"I don't approve either. But Doctor Moira, and Nurse Annie, and Doctor Hank, and all their friends are doing their best to find a cure."

"Will they find one in time to save me?"

She wanted to say "yes." If it meant giving Yana hope, Marie would say the moon was made of ice cream. "I hope they do, sugar. I really do. I'd be so sad if you died. You're absolutely wonderful and I've only know you this short time."

"Mom and Pete will be real sad, too. And my friends in school." Yana coughed again. This fit lasted a good thirty seconds before petering away. "Do you think it hurts?"

"Do I think what hurts? Having ALD?"

"Well, yeah. But also... but also, dying. Will it hurt?"

"I don't know, honey. I hope not. But we're going to hope for a cure, remember? Because Moira, and Hank, and Annie are awesome."

"Okay. I'll hope. It'll make Pete and Mom happy, too." Yana picked at the straps of her mask. In a whisper that Marie almost didn't catch, she added, "But I still don't want it to hurt."

Marie hugged her so tight, her mask left imprints on her shoulder.

* * *

Pete met her in the hallway as she exited Yana's room. Marie started, surprised. Though, she should she have been? This was his sister's place. He stared at the wall, a hand pressed on the panelling, as though he could phase through it like Kitty. Slowly, he turned his head in her direction. His eyes...

God, Pete's canvases had nothing on his eyes. Marie didn't have to touch an inch of his skin to know his thoughts. Every shard of bitterness, every sliver of hope, every emotion he must have felt in the last sixty some-odd days showed in his eyes. Everything he struggled to convey in words or paints was right there. He had no idea how to hide his feelings and Marie treasured him all the more for it. She should have remembered, should have known, even when he'd disguised himself in metal or guido-clothing during the op.

She pressed herself against the pillar that was his body. Her arms wrapped best as she could around his waist. He didn't embrace her back, not at first. He kept one hand at his side while the other remained practically glued on the wall. The panelling bent under his palm, threatening to break.

"Pete." Marie held him tighter. "Pete. Oh, sugar."

His body shimmered into steel. Marie squeezed even more. She grasped his shirt, eyes clenched.

"Don't. Please don't, Pete. I'm here. I'm right here for you. I'll always be here for you, I promise. I _promise._ "

He held his steel form a minute longer then, shuddering, it melted away as did his balance. He fell on the hardwood, taking Marie with him. Their knees smacked hard on the floor despite the carpeting. She still didn't let go. She couldn't. Not with Pete collapsing, curling around her, his great strong body heaving with dry sobs. She reached up to tuck his head on her shoulder and he let her. Her collarbone ached where his jaw worked. At first, Marie thought he was just gasping for air. Soon, she recognized one word, repeated over and over, swallowed, too painful to ask out loud.

"Why?" Pete shook, emptied himself of emotion, and asked, and asked, and asked: "Why?"

Marie didn't have an answer. She could only hold her best friend and cry.


End file.
